The Loverboy Phenomenon

A loverboy is a human trafficker who recruits women and girls in order to sexually exploit them. Using various techniques of seduction and manipulation, loverboys exert control over their victims and make them dependent, ultimately forcing them into prostitution. Taking advantage of the victims’ vulnerability and naïveté, the method used by loverboys constitutes human trafficking, whose ultimate purpose is always exploitation.

The loverboy’s strategy is typically the same: presenting himself as a charming man wishing to build a relationship, he pretends to start a romantic love story with his future victim in order to gain her trust. He uses various lures: promises of a better future, expensive gifts to seduce the victim, emotional manipulation, and psychological blackmail… Social media are increasingly used as recruitment tools.

If many young women targeted by loverboys are brought to Belgium, particularly from countries of the former Eastern bloc, a significant number of Belgian victims is also recorded each year.

Victims of loverboys are most often young women from socio-economically precarious backgrounds, with personal histories marked by stays in youth welfare institutions or juvenile justice centers. However, victims also include teenagers from more affluent or middle-class backgrounds. As for young women of foreign origin exploited sexually in Belgium, most of them have been trapped by a loverboy.

Each victim’s life story is unique. However, their fragility often stems from common factors: the desire for a better life, low self-esteem, and emotional vulnerability.

Several signs may indicate that a young woman is under a loverboy’s control: the presence of a new, very controlling and possessive “boyfriend”; the sudden appearance of money from an unknown or unclear source; increasing isolation from family and friends; proposals for travel or work abroad; sudden loss of interest in school; consumption of illegal substances; traces of physical violence…

Among the continuum of gender-based violence, the sexual exploitation of women and children continues to thrive in an almost total indifference to the torture, physical abuse, and psychological suffering endured by the victims.

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