Blessing Okoedion, 29, is one of the rare women who managed to escape the trafficking gangs and speak out against the flesh trade.
She came to Naples four years ago on the promise of a job as a computer technician but was forced onto the streets as a prostitute.
“The number of girls on the street is increasing and some of them are very young,” said Ms Okoedion, who now works as a cultural mediator and wrote a book about her ordeal, The Courage of Freedom. “When I see them out there, I remember my own time on the street. I felt like I was dead. You no longer feel like a person, you feel like a product that is bought and sold. They take everything away from you.
“Even now, when I ask street directions from a man in Italy, often he will say ‘how much do you cost?’”
The young women live in terror of the madams who run them, as well as Nigerian criminals who organise the trade in league with Italian mafia networks such as the Camorra of Naples.
Even local churches are involved – Ms Okoedion claims one preacher she came across is a well-known trafficker.
Once they arrive in Italy they are told they must pay 30,000 euros or more in order to win back their freedom.
Over the last three years there has been an almost 600 per cent increase in the number of potential sex trafficking victims arriving in Italy by sea, according to the International Organisation for Migration, the UN’s migration agency.
In 2014, just under 1,500 Nigerian women and girls reached Italy. That number rose dramatically to 11,000 in 2016.
The exploitation “increasingly involves younger girls – often minors – who are already subject to violence and abuse on their way to Europe,” the agency said in a report released in July.
Article Appeared @http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/14/nigerian-girls-young-13-increasingly-trafficked-italy-work-street/