Sexual slavery is a special case of slavery which includes various different practices:

1. forced prostitution (which can include religious prostitution)
2. single-owner sexual slavery
3. slavery for primarily non-sexual purposes where sex is common or permissible

In general, the nature of slavery means that the slave is de facto available for sex, and ordinary social conventions and legal protections that would otherwise constrain an owner's actions are not effective. Female slaves are at highest risk of sexual abuse and sexual slavery.

The term "consensual sexual slavery" (meaning see for example BDSM and total power exchange) has occasionally been used. This usage is oxymoronic; no slavery can exist because of acts or conditions to which a person freely and fully consents. The term nonetheless refers to a sexual role play between someone in an assumed position of power (e.g. dominant) and someone in a supposed position of servitude (e.g. submissive).

Modern-day sexual slavery

Forced prostitution

Forced prostitution is a form of sexual slavery that is often directed at immigrants to western countries. Often the "owners" of these people will confiscate passports and/or money in order to make the women involved completely reliant on them. This practice is universally illegal.

In many countries, illegal immigrants often work in prostitution in circumstances such that they feel they have no other choice. Often these prostitutes are kept in financial debt by the brothel owners, who charge them for their travel and other costs. The arrangement may be such that the prostitutes can never earn enough to pay off the debt. This is a form of debt bondage. This kind of sex slavery is often found in Germany and the Netherlands. Clearly separating this from East European women entering prostitution in Western countries knowingly and more or less willingly, to escape the daily hardships of their lives, is often not possible.

In addition to the First World, this also takes place in countries of South Asia such as India and Thailand, where young girls are sometimes sold (often by their own parents) to brothel owners. In modern day Thailand this is becoming much rarer, but is still widespread.

Sexual slavery in Africa

The presence of sex slavery in Africa is widespread. In many African communities marrying women requires paying money or cattle to her family, which lessens the perceived barrier to female slavery.

The colonial powers abolished slavery in the 19th century, but in areas outside their jurisdiction, such as the Mahdist empire in Sudan, the practice continued to thrive. Nowadays, institutional slavery has been banned worldwide, but in the Muslim countries Mauritania and Sudan cases still exist, including sex slavery. In Sudan, sexual abuse of female prisoners by government troops is commonplace, both in the Darfur conflict and the North-South civil war.

There are numerous reports of women sex slaves in areas without an effective government control, such as until recently, Liberia, Sierra Leone, northern Uganda and Kongo. In Zimbabwe, the government is believed to force both boys and girls into membership of a youth militia, the Green Bombers. Rape of girls here is common.

Sexual slavery in the past

Sexual slavery in Islam

The Quran considers the liberation of slaves a meritable act, orders prisoners to be released with or without ransom and forbids debt slavery. However, both the hadith and the Shariah permit slavery. Traditional Islam, (both Sunni and Shi'a) allows every Muslim man to be married to up to four wives. Because of this, there existed in African Muslim countries like Sudan, Mauritania and the former Sultanate of Zanzibar, a flourishing trade in female slaves which fetched a higher price than male slaves. Usually, slave traders sold the male slaves to the Europeans, which employed them mainly as plantation workers and labourers, while selling the female slaves to Arabs. The slave market in the holy Muslim city of Medina existed up to 1923. These slaves were acquired mainly by slave raids from Arab slavers on the indigenous African population. A smaller proportion was acquired as prisoners of war by Africans or abducted directly by Europeans. The Ottoman Empire and its precursors acquired its slaves by abducting children from the subjugated Christian Circassians, Armenians and Greeks. The boys were incorporated in the Janissary corps, many girls ended as concubines in the harems of Ottoman officials.

In the modern Middle East, authorities often look the other way in cases of child sexual slavery, as the practice is often allowed, de facto. Pious Muslims point to Mohammed's taking of the six-year-old Aisha as his bride and their consummation of the marriage when she was nine years old as a theocratic acceptance of child sex. The Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini wrote in his book Tahrirolvasyleh "a man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate."

See also: ma malakat aymanukum.

White slavery and Black slavery in the U.S. in the 19th century

In the mid-19th century in the U.S., there was a white slavery scare which suggested that large numbers of white women were being kidnapped and forced into prostitution. The prevalence of this practice was greatly exaggerated due to xenophobia, and this phenomenon is generally regarded today as having been an example of a moral panic.

In fact, at that time, the US victims of sexual slavery were overwhelmingly women of African descent, held as slaves, often purchased with sexual exploitation as the primary goal. The true story of one such girl, purchased as a sexual slave when she was fourteen, is told in Celia, A Slave (ISBN 0-38-071935-5) by Melton A. Mclaurin.

Sexual slavery of Japan in World War II

During World War II, hundreds of thousands of mostly Asian women were tricked or otherwise coerced into serving the Japanese army as prostitutes in the wartime brothels of Asia during the Japanese occupation of Korea, China and other parts of South East Asia.

Forced into sexual slavery by Japan and raped dozens of times daily by Japanese soldiers, the euphemistically named "comfort women" have faced lives of enduring shame.

Sexual slavery in Japan after World War II

Some Japanese sources assert that the euphemistically named Recreation and Amusement Association, essentially brothels set up by the Japanese Home Ministry in August 1945 to serve the occupation forces, was equivalent to the comfort women system. However, most prostitutes seem to have been Japanese women forced into the work through economic destitution, not physical coercion. The system was officially terminated in January 1946, by order of higher military commanders from the main occupying power, the United States.

Sexual slavery of Korea

According to some Korean scholars, the South Korean military had a "comfort women" system in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Sexual slavery in Nazi concentration camps in World War II

The Joy Division were groups of Jewish women in the concentration camps during World War II who were kept for the sexual pleasure of the Nazi guards, as described in Ka-tzetnik 135633's 1955 book, The House of Dolls. The Nazis also selected Polish and Ukrainian women working in forced labor and forced them into brothels.

External references

• eText (http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/2/8/1/12818/12818-8.txt) of Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers (1907) by Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell, at Project Gutenberg. A work about "Oriental brothel slavery on the Pacific Coast".