Category Archives: Allgemein

Dissociation in Prostitution

Abstract: This narrative is about dissociation in the lives of women who have been exploited through prostitution. When we speak about prostitution, we do not speak often enough about the dissociation needed for women and girls to survive sexual exploitation. The author challenges the wisdom of governments such as Germany that legalize prostitution, treating it as a “job” and ignoring the violence and subsequent dissociation in women. The author describes her personal journey, explaining how women are traumatized even after the first commercial sex act, which is a sexual assault. They dissociate which makes their lives bearable, but they fail to see its negative effects that continue even after they leave prostitution. Finally, the author relates her personal breakthrough experience to end her dissociation while she was caring for horses. This realization allowed her to identify and connect to her own feelings and to be her authentic self.

This text was published in Dignity January 2020, a Journal of sexual exploitation and Violence: Loss of Self in Dissociation in Prostitution  from the Speech hold in Washington at the Summit of the National Center Against Sexual Exploitation.

Betrayed Partners and Men with Poisoned Souls: Interview with a Former Sex Buyer in Germany

In front of the largest furniture store in Karlsruhe (a large city in southwestern Germany), two advertising placards stand side-by-side: one for a brothel and the other for a restaurant, promoting its venue for celebrations of marriage (See Figure). In Germany both stand together and apparently that does not shock anyone any more. However, prostitution does not only have disastrous conse- quences for the women in prostitution, but also has consequences for betrayed women in relationships with the buyers of sex.

Advertisements for a Brothel and a Restaurant with Celebrations for Marriages

A former buyer of sex contacted me, Ingeborg Kraus, a Karlsruhe, Germany psychologist and anti-prostitution advocate, after reading some of my work on the Internet. Eventually a telephone interview ensued.

The interviewee, an independent entrepreneur, is a 56-year-old man who was an active sex buyer for six-and-a-half years, quitting in 2015, nearly four years ago. Married for 36 years, with three adult children, his wife separated from him in 2017, and a divorce is in process.

In this interview, which follows, I focus on the realities of prostitution on society, and specifically on the harm of prostitution on the sex buyer’s wife and on relationships between men and women. The interview demonstrates that what the buyers are doing to their wives is an incredible harm, causing huge mental health damages. These collateral damages of prostitution have not come into focus until recently. Given the fact that there are a great number of married men, or those living in a firm relationship, who buy sexual services, the number of psychologically injured women in these relationships probably reaches the two-digit millions.

From his active participation on Internet forums, the interviewee tells me that he believes he is typical of many users of women in prostitution.

Here is the link: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1154&context=dignity

The United Nation 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development


“Germany will have a seat on the UN Security Council for 2019/2020. Gender equality is a precondition for global sustainable development and a central target of the United Nations Agenda 2030. It cannot be that Germany has been given a co-responsibility for keeping peace in the world, when Germany in its own country, with its legislation on prostitution, is waging a war against women. It´s a fatal contradiction.” Dr. Ingeborg Kraus
at: the Global Conference in Madrid

NEVER AGAIN! Surviving Liberalized Prostitution in Germany

This article, co-authored by a six-year survivor of the sex trade industry in Germany (Sandra Norak) and a psychologist and trauma therapist (Ingeborg Kraus), provides perspectives on the difficulty of withstanding the coercion of traffickers and the difficulties of exiting prostitution in a country in which prostitution has been legalized, normalized and made “a job like any other.” This normalization persuades survivors to believe their traffickers that it is a legitimate occupation and encourages them to endure the violence. Liberalization also has prevented the development of needed trauma services to those seeking to exit the sex trade industry.

Here is the link to the article published in Dignity: Never Again!

Never again prostitution!

A text by Sandra Norak and Dr. Ingeborg Kraus, published on 18th September 2018 on Trauma & Prostitution „Nie wieder Prostitution“; in the following translated from German into English by Abolition de l´industrie du sexe du Canada.

We got to know each other in our common participation as experts in the documentation “Brothel Germany – the billion-business with prostitution” which was nominated for “Prix Europa” 2018. Sandra Norak was a victim of lover-boys, a dropout from 6 years in prostitution who is now finishing her studies of law. Dr. Ingeborg Kraus is diploma psychologist and trauma therapist. In this common text we want to unite our experiences and perspectives.

 

Sometimes, for us the way appears very long, sometimes too long so that we think we won’t have enough power and won’t manage to go the way until the end. Exit from prostitution, a milieu which has mostly destroyed body and soul, is a very long and painful way which sometimes appears endless and on which you encounter apparently unbreachable obstacles.

Again and again we hear or read about dropouts who inside of themselves fight with the notion to go into prostitution again or finally really go back into it again, although they consider their experience in prostitution as traumatic and name prostitution a kind of violence. This behaviour isn’t understood by many outsiders.

With our text, we want to clarify about the difficulties of leaving prostitution and simultaneously encourage women in the process of leaving and after. Continue reading

The “German Model”, 17 years after the liberalization of prostitution

Speech by Dr. Ingeborg Kraus at the Italian parliament in Rom, 28.05.2018.

Proofreading by Mary Veronica Clancy.

I am honoured today to have the opportunity to share our experiences with a law that legalises and normalises prostitution. Far from protecting the women, “the German model“ has become “hell on earth“ for them. I use this strong comparison on purpose, because the situation in Germany has become extremely serious. I will give you a short overview of the effects of this law.

Before I came to this conference, I spoke to two police inspectors who have long working experience in the milieu: Helmut Sporer and Manfred Paulus. Sporer[1] said that prostitution has risen up to 30% since 2002. We have made a huge mistake implementing this law and have gone in a direction few could have imagined would be so disastrous. Prostitution has nothing to do with sexual liberation, it is just money that counts. The profit of this business is enormous: we are talking about 15 billion Euros of direct transactions every year[2]. It has become an important industrial sector were women´s bodies are objectified and used as a commodity. Continue reading

Against Hate, Nordic Model Now!

Speech by Dr. Ingeborg Kraus at the international abolitionist conference in Buenos Aires, May 17, 2018.

Proofreading by Anya Zeldovich Noble.

Thank you for inviting me here to Buenos Aires[1]. Thank you to all the organizations that have made this possible.

I was asked to talk about something general. So I was asking myself, how many men are taking part in this conference today? One or two? Usually there are just a few who come, and it´s a pity, because it´s a topic that regards them.

There is a new study that came out a couple of weeks ago, conducted by Melissa Farley. A screening for traumatic brain injuries[2] has been made among women in an exit program. The violence is enormous! She found out that 95% had sustained head injuries. They have been hit in their head with hands or fists, or objects, like bottles, bats, sticks, hammers, guns, telephones, canes, belts, rocks, steel tubes, or ash trays. Or their heads had been slammed into objects, like floors, against dashboards, steering wheels, windows of cars, furniture or sinks, against vehicles, buildings, doors or stairs.

Well, it is not the women themselves who hit their heads with an ash tray or their own fists, no, it is men who are doing this. This topic regards men! Continue reading

Letter to a Trauma Therapist

Transcribed from the speech given by Dr. Ingeborg Kraus at the conference “Prostitution – the Uncensored Truth” in Munich on March 16, 2018.

Translation: Livia Belfiore – Reviewed by Dr. Melissa Farley and Firdes Ceylan – Picture: Hailin Wang, „Deep night“.

On my way to Munich today I read about the Third Reich in an alternative city guide. In it, I learned that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler was a great admirer of Naturopathy. Not far from his personal herb garden at Dachau concentration camp, experiments with homeopathic remedies were conducted with prisoners with tuberculosis. Mere meters from there, cruel medical experiments in low-pressure chambers and causing hypothermia were carried out. Next to the crematorium was the concentration camp’s very own brothel, and close to that a rabbit breeding ground, which the SS guards cared for lovingly. After the war, around 80% of former officials were reinstated.

As I was reading, I suddenly became deeply aware of our history of compartmentalizing evil. This does not merely concern the individual level, where the same person who affectionately cares for rabbits will also be able to murder humans in gas chambers, but is also true on a collective level. Our people compartmentalized the devastating evil and, after the war, went on as if nothing had occurred.

The mechanism of collective dissociation is the same when it comes to prostitution. Herein however, it is of the utmost importance to analyze, educate and denounce the system in order to help women exit their precarious situation. Anything less legitimates the mental and physical destruction of the many women trapped in the system of Prostitution. Continue reading

Sign the Petition!

https://www.change.org/p/punish-the-buying-of-sex-abolish-prostitution

Dear Chancellor Angela Merkel, dear Minister Heiko Maas, and dear Minister Manuela Schwesig,

We appeal to you to:

1.   create a legal framework to outlaw the buying of sex in order to stop the use of women as sexual commodities.

2.   renegotiate the laws on prostitution with the aid of experts and survivors who are not profiteers of the ‘prostitution system’.

3.   ensure that exit strategies for those who wish to leave prostitution are mandated by law.

4.   ensure that the German government takes the long overdue step to ratify the United Nations Convention of 1949 which states that “prostitution and the accompanying evil of the traffic in persons for the purpose of prostitution are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person and endanger the welfare of the individual, the family and the community.”

Belle de Jour and Catherine Deneuve – The Role of her Life

Article by Dr. Ingeborg Kraus – Karlsruhe, 14th February 2018

Edited by Ulrike Maier – Translation: Firdes Ceylan

The film „Belle de Jour“ is a masterpiece. It is not a sexist film. It is not a film about a woman who wants to live her sexual phantasies, or a film about a woman who wants to break out of a prudish society. No other film was misunderstood as much as “Belle de Jour”. Catherine Deneuve herself who represented this role perfectly, has never understood it. It is the role of her life: a woman who does not recognize sexual abuse.

Why is it that a beautiful woman from a good family lets herself being mistreated, humiliated and sexually abused? There are only two short movie scenes that solve the riddle. For a few seconds during minute 14 of the film you can see a girl, little Séverine, who is being kissed by an adult – his hand grabs under her dress. The second scene: Shortly before Séverine knocks at the door of the brothel for the first time she gets a flashback: she sees little Séverine who refuses the host. She feels guilty for what had been done to her. It is not the adult woman who goes to the brothel, it is the girl feeling guilty. It is striking how the adult self constantly apologizes. She is suffering from recurring nightmares in which she is being humiliated, in which dirt is being thrown at her, in which she is being insulted, whipped, raped. Adult Séverine is often absent in her life, like in a trance, unfocused. She drops things. She cannot develop a real closeness to her husband. Continue reading