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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26261221
Mega-brothels: Has Germany become 'bordello of Europe'?
This is Paradise, in Stuttgart, Germany - one of the largest brothels in Europe.
And it's legal.
Built at a cost of more than 6m euros (Ł4.9m), and opened in 2008, it boasts a restaurant, a cinema, a spa and 31 private rooms for the hundreds of male customers it attracts each day.
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“
Start Quote
You feel safe and you have security. It's not like the street where you don't know what happens with a man”
Hannah, 22
Paradise worker
Germany legalised prostitution in 2002, creating an industry now thought to be worth 16bn euros a year.
By treating prostitution as a job like any other, the idea was to prise women away from the pimps that often run the sex trade.
But critics say Germany's liberal approach with its sex laws has spectacularly failed, normalising prostitution and turning the country into what they are now calling the "bordello of Europe".
The number of prostitutes in Germany is thought to have doubled to 400,000 over the last 20 years.
The market is now dominated by "mega-brothels", which offer sex on an almost industrial scale, often to tourists, many of them bussed in from abroad.
Many of the women working at Paradise Stuttgart are from Eastern European countries such as Romania and Bulgaria.
http://business.time.com/2013/06/18/...-of-the-world/
Germany Has Become the Cut-Rate Prostitution Capital of the World
Prostitution became legal in Germany in 2002, and the open sex trade has taken off in the years since. There are reportedly around 3,000 red-light establishments in the country, and 500 brothels in Berlin alone. It’s been estimated that more than 1 million men pay for sex in Germany every day.
One of the classic arguments for legalizing prostitution is that recognizing and regulating the world’s oldest profession would improve the conditions of sex workers. Instead, recent reports paint legalized prostitution in Germany largely as a failure.
In May, Der Spiegel published a series of stories highlighting the atrocious conditions endured by prostitutes in Germany, some of whom say they arrived in the country against their will. Typically, the stories involve young women from Romania and Bulgaria who were unwittingly duped into coming to Germany, where they were forced to service dozens of men daily in flat-rate deals where customers can have all the sex they want for an allotted time period, starting at just €49 (around $65). The women say customers are known to take drugs to improve their sexual performance in order to get their money’s worth. Some women report getting paid a pittance and never being allowed to leave their brothels. During rare breaks from work, they share a room with other prostitutes, where there is a single bed and no other furniture.
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