No World Cup boom in Germany's brothels

Cup doesn't generate anticipated boom in sex trade

Associated Press

Berlin ?- The biggest brothel in town was built to capitalize on soccer's great pilgrimage.

Artemis fine tuned its animal print-and-velvet vibe with World Cup accents. Clients who didn't shell out hundreds of dollars to catch a game at nearby Olympic Stadium could enter for $95 Cdn and watch in a cinema normally reserved for erotic films.

The owners of Artemis hoped for as many as 500 men a day. The actual number has been closer to 250 ?- though that's still twice the norm. With only Sunday's final left in Berlin, the customers have been well behaved.

"There was no stress here ?- all soft and easy, thank God," said Vanessa, a manager who would only give her first name.

The calculation ahead of the World Cup was simple: Hordes of fans swept up in the World Cup's party atmosphere would head to the local bordello. In anticipation, Artemis opened last fall as the most-publicized brothel in a nation with an estimated 400,000 legal prostitutes.

The market was certainly there. By the time the World Cup ends, an estimated two million people will have visited Germany, according to the national tourism centre.

Those tourists appear more focused on soccer than sex. One reason may be the sport's group atmosphere, which doesn't match the typically clandestine nature of the sex trade.

"Football and beer go well together," said Burkhard Jahn, a police spokesman in Cologne, which showed no noticeable increase in prostitution despite hosting five matches. "Football and prostitution are apparently not as great a combination."

At some brothels, he said, "the women were all bored."

In Munich, authorities reported a sharp spike in the number of legal prostitutes at the beginning of the tournament, then a quick decrease.

"Most of the women went back home," said Peter Breitner, of the Munich police's organized crime division. "Tourists and families from all around the world are travelling to Germany, but they're not coming here to visit a bordello in Munich."

Though there have been reports of lines out the door at some Berlin brothels, others complain of scores of empty beds. The truth seems somewhere in between, said Ulrike Helwerth, of the National Council of German Women's Organizations.

"In any case, there's no evidence it's way up anywhere," Helwerth said.

The news may settle fears among those ?- including one U.S. congressman ?- who worried that the monthlong tournament in 12 German cities would lead to more trafficking of women forced into prostitution.

This week, a preliminary report by Sweden's aid agency and a Swiss nonprofit cited no signs of increased human trafficking or forced prostitution. The researchers credited preventive efforts by German police and anti-trafficking activists.

Helwerth said it's too early to tell exactly how many prostitutes came from other countries or how many worked of their own free will, because many police agencies didn't conduct special raids to check papers.

"Forced prostitution and human trafficking are crimes that one can only find when one is looking for them," she said. "The picture is very sketchy."