Early last December, as part of a team of journalists, we attached hidden cameras to our
bodies and entered the hidden world of the traffickers.
The idea for the project was to investigate the culture of police secrecy and complicity
whereby glamorously code-named operations inefficiently targeted the human trafficking
business, which seemingly continues to thrive in Romania. Despite tough laws against it,
prostitution is booming in Bucharest. Newspapers, internet sites, city nightlife guides
and many of the city's 10,000 taxi drivers all point you towards places where you can
buy what they call "paid love".
Evenimentul Zilei, a Romanian daily paper, was planning to air a new investigative TV
programme on the topic. RCIJ members who had worked for the title had already learned much
about human trafficking, and were participating in a broader IWPR regional study into the
issue. Information had been gained through law enforcement agencies, published reports and
interviews with underworld figures involved in trafficking and with traffickers themselves.
The aim of this joint investigative would be to spark real public debate - and response -
by focusing on the individual suffering caused by the crime, from a victim's point of view.
So a plan was devised to go undercover and record the whole story. One journalist would play
the role of a foreigner and pretend to buy a girl. The foreigner ruse eased our entry into
the world of the pimps, traffickers and middlemen. The foreigner needed a translator and so
I took on this identity myself.
To the underworld figures we contacted through the course of the investigation, I was just
another guy on the make, trying to get by. Two other two journalists were assigned to follow
us unseen. They had the key role of watching over both of us, and monitoring the traffickers'
movements.
More practically, we had to worry about our equipment, including hidden cameras, recorders
and wires of various kinds, all of which had to pass unnoticed. At the same time, we would
have to change videotapes and batteries from time to time, which limited our freedom of
movement and sometimes spelled serious trouble.
THE SEARCH
Our first encounter began with a taxi driver.
"Hi mate," I offered. "My friend is a foreigner and he'd like to have some fun with
girls tonight. Can you help us?"
"Sure, sir. Hop in. I know a girl you will like a lot," the driver replied. "She's not one
of those working the streets. No sir, she's a friend. She lives in a flat close by, near the
national football stadium. She chooses her own clients. She's clean and young and she charges 800,000 lei (25 dollars) per hour at most. You can tell your friend that if he doesn't like
this girl, we can go see some others."
The taxi driver was not aware that his car was being followed by another member of the RCIJ
team, who was supposed to interfere if the situation got ugly.
But the situation didn't get ugly. The taxi driver was happy to take the money for the ride,
even though the foreigner said he did not fancy the girl. The driver was only sorry he
couldn't reach a friend who had other girls available. The pimp's mobile phone was
turned off.
After visiting a few other places where prostitutes were available, we felt we had taken
enough footage for the night. But we had nothing new. On videotape, Bucharest was just
another illegal version of Amsterdam's famous red-light district. We tried to find cab drivers
who would offer underage girls, but they all said this was too tricky.
Over the following days, we had similar experiences with hotel security men from four
expensive Bucharest hotels. They all offered prostitutes and a discount price for the hotel
room if we took the girls they offered. The girls were either in the hotel lobby or bar or
just a telephone call away. The men said it was no problem if we brought in girls they did
not know, though we would have to pay the full price for the room.
After a few nights, it was time to move from the streets and the front men to confront the
system's key figures: the traffickers themselves.
