After receiving a formal complaint about a case of sexual exploitation, the police in the city of Punta Alta conducted a raid at the bar Afrodita Aphrodite located in this city.
In the place were two women from Paraguay who claimed to be victims of sexual exploitation. The prosecutor argued that the defendants recruited the victims by means of deception and transported them in September and November from the Republic of Paraguay to the city of Punta Alta in Argentina, and here were harboured to work as prostitutes in the locale mentioned above.
According to the prosecution, the defendants facilitated the victims a place to live, deceiving them about the real job they had to do, intimidating them, and ultimately affecting their dignity, sexuality and freedom of movement. The defendants denied the charges and in their defense claimed that the profits of the bar did not come from the prostitution of the women, but that the actual presence of women at the bar increased the clientele, and the women offered drinks to customers.
Besides that, they claimed that any sexual relationship between the women and customers was their business and had to be conducted outside the bar. Also the defendants added that other Paraguayan and Brazilian women that worked at the bar were usually brought there by a friend who already worked or had worked at Afrodita.
Some of the women who worked there said they were free, worked there by choice and never suffered any kind of abuse, while some others said they had no knowledge of any act of violence in the brothel. Because of the contradictory testimonies of the victims, the Court decided to declare the defendants not guilty. To argue the contrary is to adhere a position substantially discriminatory, equals practically poverty with a sort of inability to make decisions about ones own life plan and this simply because we do not share the decision.
