USATODAY.com - In Belgium, brothels are big business

GHENT, Belgium — Bridgette doesn't worry about getting arrested because she is a prostitute. That's legal here. She worries about the police because she runs a brothel. That isn't legal, at least not yet.

Bridgette (who asked that her real name not be used) ducks the law by calling her brothel a massage parlor. "I am the one who gives them permission to prostitute themselves. And so, under the law in Belgium, I am a pimp," she says.

A veteran of 18 years in the sex business, Bridgette wants brothels to be legalized. However, she is skeptical any politician will push through legislation. But Belgium's new prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, has made legalizing bordellos one of his government's goals.

Faced with the reality of brothels and the Europe-wide problems that come with them — human trafficking, drugs and sexually transmitted diseases — the Belgian parliament is expected to pass a law next year. Three bills in favor have been introduced in both houses of parliament.

"I am certain there will be a law," says Hilde Vautmans, a member of Belgium's parliament, who favors legalizing bordellos. "I don't know how much time (it will take), but I think the minds of the people in the parties now in the government are really in favor of it."

The proposals are patterned after laws passed in the Netherlands and Germany. In Belgium, the bills would give prostitutes the same legal rights as any employee or self-employed person. The women and men working in the sex trade would have to pay taxes (the government estimates it could take in $55 million a year). They would be eligible to receive social security and health care benefits. The brothel owners also would be licensed and required to prove their prostitutes are in the country legally and have work permits. By requiring prostitutes to register, the government should be able to dictate safe-sex standards and better working conditions.

A competing proposal against bordellos follows Sweden's model, which not only outlaws prostitution but penalizes customers with fines or six months in prison.

"I fully disagree (with plans to legalize brothels), and a lot of women's groups disagree with that proposed legislation," says Anne-Marie Lizin, a member of parliament who has co-sponsored the bill against brothels and their customers. "You cannot say you're fighting the trafficking of people and at the same time legalize (brothels) because you open the market."

The debate over changing Belgium's law will likely spread far beyond Belgium, which hosts the headquarters of the 15-member European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the U.S.-backed military alliance.

Walking around the red-light districts in Belgian cities, it's hard to believe bordellos are outlawed here. Dozens of boutique-style brothels with large front windows line the streets set aside by politicians for prostitution. What's for sale is clearly on display: women dressed in lingerie and stiletto heels. The brothels claim to be bars or clubs with sexy waitresses who serve beer, champagne and soft drinks. But the prostitutes pay the bar owner about $120 to rent the window space for eight hours. When a customer enters, she draws her curtains and charges about $55 for sex.

About 80,000 people visit prostitutes in Belgium each day, according to an official government estimate. That's more than the daily number who go to the movies, says Jean-Marie Dedecker, a member of parliament. According to official reports, the Belgian capital of Brussels has become a center for the trade of children in prostitution. The problem, Dedecker says, is not the existence of the sex trade, but the problems that go with it. About two-thirds of Belgium's estimated 10,000 prostitutes were brought in illegally by pimps from eastern European countries such as Russia. Others enter from Africa. It can be big business for organized crime and even some government officials.

Three thousand women came into Belgium from Nigeria alone in the past five or six years, says Dedecker, who also sits on the government's commission on human trafficking. "The Nigerian embassy helps to falsify their passports. After petrol, the biggest export of Nigeria is people."

European governments believe that legalizing prostitution and brothels could solve some of these problems. In the USA, prostitution is against the law in all states, except certain Nevada counties. There appears to be no move to make it legal elsewhere.

"The Europeans have a more liberal attitude toward paid sex and a more liberal attitude toward nudity," says Richard Posner, a judge for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago and co-author of A Guide to America's Sex Laws. He adds, "I don't think there's much of a perceived crisis in dealing with prostitution problems (in the USA). There are so many other concerns on (politicians') menu, I don't think there is pressure to change these laws."

And while illegal immigration is a problem in the USA, it is less often linked to human trafficking in the sex-for-sale world where girls are lured from foreign countries and forced to be prostitutes.

Still, the problem of trafficking of people for the sex trade recently has become an important issue for the United States at home and abroad. In his address to the United Nations in September, President Bush called for a global effort to stop human trafficking. He said 800,000 to 900,000 people are bought, sold or forced across borders, many of them teenage girls, some as young as 5, destined for the sex industry. This issue is significant to evangelical Christians, who are some of Bush's most-loyal supporters.

"The victims of sex trade see little of life before they see the very worst of life: an underground of brutality and lonely fear," Bush told the U.N. General Assembly.

The State Department estimates 18,000-20,000 people are trafficked into the USA each year, although not necessarily for the sex trade.The United States enacted a law in 2000 to ensure traffickers are punished, victims are protected and government agencies take action.

The State Department, which views such trafficking as a human-rights issue, produces an annual report on countries' efforts — or failure — to end the practice.

In its 2003 report, the State Department suggests that countries that don't make efforts to end human trafficking could face sanctions.

While Belgium's pro-legalization plans are following the lead of the Netherlands and Germany, the new laws in those countries have produced mixed results.

Brothels were legalized in Holland three years ago. But many local governments are still trying to implement the law. Some businesses — banks, for example — continue to discriminate against sex workers by refusing to let the women open accounts. Problems with tax evasion and illegal immigrants are rampant.

Only 5%-10% of the estimated 20,000 prostitutes in the Netherlands pay taxes, according to Mariska Majoor, a former sex worker who now heads the Prostitution Information Centre in Amsterdam. "Tax people work very hard, but they don't work very hard on the street," she says.

Many prostitutes also cannot register with the government to work as prostitutes because they come from countries such as Russia and Albania, which are not part of the 15-nation European Union.

Since brothels were legalized in the Netherlands, these women have become street prostitutes. Though it is more dangerous, the woman would rather sell their bodies on street corners than return to impoverished conditions in their home countries, Majoor says.

"There is a little bit of a panic situation among the illegal and migrant prostitutes because they don't know where to go" but the streets, Majoor says.

For many women operating under the police radar, the situation will improve next year when the European Union adds 10 more members, including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Women from these countries will be eligible to apply for work permits in any EU country.

Germany, which legalized brothels in January 2002, also is struggling to implement the law. Many prostitutes don't want to register because they will have to pay income taxes for prior years.

Government agencies declined to provide figures for how much tax has been collected from prostitutes. "We wish the effect (of the law) was bigger" in terms of taxes, concedes Kathrin Bauer, a spokeswoman for women's policies of the Greens political party in Germany.

Belgian politicians and prostitutes know ending the ban on brothels won't be easy. The reasons women turn to prostitution are complicated. Younger women are usually lured by pimps, who often double as traffickers. Older women may be desperate for money. Drugs often fuel their motives. The solutions are controversial, and the debates are passionate.

Bridgette says she has conflicted feelings about the sex trade. She has testified at government hearings in favor of legalizing bordellos and still services a handful of long-time clients. Yet, she admits prostitution "kills you."

Her story is unusual because she turned to prostitution at the age of 41, after her clothing boutique went out of business and she lost her home trying to pay off debts.

After working in a "club" for six years, she had enough money to buy a home in an industrial suburb of Ghent, 30 miles northwest of Brussels. She turned it into a brothel and now has four girls working for her. The gardens are beautifully manicured, and the waiting room has pictures of her children and grandchildren. There are three bedrooms, two of which are specially equipped for sadomasochistic sex.

"I am not a woman who can say I hate men. It's not hate. But I cannot have respect any more for a man, and that's because of the things I've seen," says Bridgette, now 59.

"But that's because I know there are a lot of women suffering in that business," she says in a voice raw from years of smoking. "For me, even though I'm making good money, it should not exist. But I am a realist and know it's impossible."