Sex workers
Up to 1000 women each year are illegally trafficked into Australia to work as sex workers in brothels around the country. A Senate inquiry released last year found that a major issue is actually locating the sex workers, and then persuading them to trust and cooperate with the police. Chris Payne is an ex Australian federal police officer who set up one of the first operations targetting sex trafficking in the early 1990s. He resigned from the force in 1995, after feeling dissolusioned with what he describes as the indifference and racism his colleagues showed towards the Asian sex workers. Since then he has continued to campaign against sex slavery and trafficking. He is the feature of a new documentary called ‘Trafficked’, which follows his attempts to find out how these women and young girls end up in Australian brothels. The Wire’s Belinda Lopez asked Chris Payne if he believed the apathetic attitude of Australian authorities towards trafficked sex workers still existed today.