Last week, photojournalist Mimi Chakarova presented her work on sex trafficking at the Tides Momentum 2009 conference in San Francisco. Chakarova talks about her personal story—specifically her experience growing up in Bulgaria—and how that drives her work.
"I want to ... let you know how surreal it is to be here right now. About two weeks ago I was in brothels in Istanbul, posing to be a prostitute for sale," she says as an introduction. Chakarova spent the summer gathering video material for a full-length documentary about sex trafficking in Eastern Europe. This past spring, she co-produced a multimedia website with the Center for Investigative Reporting called The Price of Sex: Women Speak—it includes four intimate video profiles of women who have been trafficked as sex slaves.
Watch Chakarova's presentation at the Momentum 2009 conference:
Women's eNews featured CIR correspondent Mimi Chakarova as "Journalist of the Month"—spotlighting her work on sex trafficking and the multimedia project co-produced with CIR, "The Price of Sex: Women Speak."
From eNews:
For the seven-year-long investigative series, Chakarova delved deep into the murky world of sex trafficking, interviewing dozens of women--and even posing as a trafficked woman herself. The result is a handful of profiles, narrated through photography, video and audio, which paint a picture of what these women must endure.
Chakarova, in conjunction with the Center for Investigative Reporting, based in Berkeley, Calif., brought these stories to the public in May of this year. They launched www.priceofsex.org, a Web site that unites these women's stories with resources on the issue, allowing people to take action, donate or learn more.
Over the course of the project, Chakarova estimates that she spoke with up to 50 women from Eastern Europe who had been trafficked. At times, her subjects were so traumatized that she could not bring herself to continue interviewing.
"You feel 'Why am I doing this?' It's painful. In those cases I did not push," Chakarova told Women's eNews in a phone interview.
The Inter Press Service, an international news agency focused on development and globalization, published a lengthy review of photojournalist Mimi Chakarova's work on sex trafficking today. Chakarova's multimedia project, The Price of Sex, was produced by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Chakarova's work sensitively presents the tragic stories of women from countries such as Moldova or the Ukraine sold into brutal sexual slavery often by neighbours or acquaintances. The few women who manage to escape find themselves facing not only serious health issues or psychological trauma, but also the social stigma associated with having worked as sex workers.
One of the young women interviewed by Chakarova, Jenea, from a small village in southern Moldova, was sold into prostitution by a neighbour who had promised to help her get a job in Moscow. At 18, Jenea found herself locked in a hotel room in Turkey, forced to sleep with as many as 50 men on some days. She escaped after one year.
Back in her village, she now lives in a two-room house with her sister and niece, unable to find a job because of prejudice, and health problems - incontinence, a direct result of the sexual abuse suffered in Turkey. "It would have been better for me not to have been born," Jenea says softly, on camera.
Chakarova’s research certainly goes further than telling the terrible stories of trafficked women. The detailed personal accounts highlight the problems that need to be addressed if sex trafficking is to be controlled. Poverty emerges time and again as the main cause in each of her stories.