Trafficking of Southeast Asian Women For Sex In Queensland's Mining Towns

Vulnerable young women with hardly any education and poor understanding of English are more and more being trafficked for sex in Queensland's booming mining towns, report police. Mount Isa police district Inspector Paul Biggin informed the Australian officers that the inland Queensland city and other mining towns are increasingly being confronted with the problem.

"Women and girls who cannot speak English, or who have a very low level of English, and a very low level of education, who are basically being trafficked for sex, from one mining town to the next," The Age quoted Biggin, as saying.

"They are working on a fly-in, fly-out basis, two weeks here, two weeks in the next town and so on; they are being advertised as available in the local newspapers, and they are coerced or threatened into doing it," he added.

"They are being told they cannot go to the police because in the countries they come from, the police might even be part of the problem," he said.

Biggin further said: "And whenever we have an operation to target them, they come into the station and you can see that they are being controlled mentally and physically and it's very difficult to get them to open up to authority and enable us to help them."

Source-ANI