Abuse allegations in the Dutch porn industry require more attention, says Parliament

The Cabinet is going to have an investigation started into abuse allegations in the Dutch porn industry after a request from the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch Parliament. Minister of Justice David van Weel has instructed the Research and Data Centre (WODC) to investigate this, he said in a Tweede Kamer debate.

According to the minister, an initial investigation in 2023 did not yield any specific signals of abuses, but he also saw that journalists had recently discovered all kinds of criminal practices.

CDA MP Harmen Krul was one of the people pointing out countless examples of human trafficking and sexual exploitation of women that media outlets have reported. There are also 45,000 advertisements online that try to convince sex workers, mainly women from Eastern Europe, to go abroad to work, for example, to the Netherlands.

When the women get to the country, they have no other place to go because their passports are taken from them, and they are sometimes handed over to criminals. Other political parties also think it is essential that practices in the porn industry are looked at. Victims of exploitation could be helped better, and perpetrators could be criminally prosecuted, they said.

Other parties, including coalition members VVD and BBB, also want people who know of human trafficking occurring to report this to the police. The Tweede Kamer had already pushed for this a while ago, but the Cabinet at the time wanted to investigate an extension of the reporting obligation first. That takes far too long, according to VVD MP Rosemarijn Dral, who wants it arranged as soon as possible.

Van Weel is not against an obligation to report crimes but thinks caution is needed. He pointed out that an obligation to report can lead to a breach of the bond of trust between the victim and the care provider. He wants to discuss the proposition with Tweede Kamer at a later stage and possibly involve it in the Code of Criminal Procedure, which is going to be implemented over the next few years.

The new Cabinet wants the age for legal prostitution to be raised to 21. Most supported this idea, with nobody criticizing it. The minister said that he would submit a letter before the justice budget was discussed, in which he would outline his plans for tackling human trafficking and sexual exploitation, among other things.