“Prostitution is paid rape“, says Patricia Hermosilla, a psychologist from Metges del Món in the Balearic Islands who spoke yesterday about mental health at the training sessions on prostitution organised by the Ibiza Council for its social and health workers. “There is talk of consent, but we should really talk about desire,” continues the expert, who stresses that women who are in this situation have no choice but to consent.
Hermosilla points out that it is common for these women to suffer from Stockholm syndrome with respect to their exploiters, “but they feel a profound rejection, a lot of disgust for the pimps”. In fact, many of them cannot have sexual relations with other men. “They don’t get aroused,” says the psychologist, who explains that some of them end up with one of those who pay for their bodies: “Between being raped by many or being raped by just one…”.
Both Hermosilla and Belén Matesanz, coordinator of the NGO in the Balearic Islands, dispel the myth, almost a mantra for many, that it is the women who decide to work as prostitutes. “There is no such free choice. If you come from another country, have no papers and have left behind a family to support, if you are a man you work in the fields as a labourer and if you are a woman you end up in prostitution,” said Hermosilla during the break on the second day.
Prostitution: the myth of free choice
“You can choose if you have several options, if this is the only one you are not choosing,” says Matesanz, who says that 68% of these women suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. “Women suffer it after rape, they suffer a continuous violation”, says Matesanz, who highlights the process of dissociation that these women suffer: “The brain, for survival, blocks that situation”.
“Prostitution is a sexual aggression day after day, aggressions that usually also come with violence,” says the psychologist, who explains that these women “are not aware” of the mental health problems they suffer. Only some of them realize it “when they finally reach their limit”. Most suffer from anxiety, sleep and gastrointestinal disorders, and suicidal thoughts are also common. “They don’t say they want to die, they say they want to go to sleep and not wake up”, continues Hermosilla, who explains that the only thing they can do is “hold space, listen and put patches on”.
Rocío López, an assistance technician for the NGO in Ibiza, explains that Doctor Cristina Molina, from the women’s care unit in es Viver, tells her that many of these women come to her surgery with pain in the genital area. “They are constantly being penetrated. Many times they do tests and they have nothing, but they say that it hurts, it is a psychological, emotional pain”.
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