HAREM VICTIM

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3894, 26 April 1937, Page 6

HAREM VICTIM

ENGLISH GIRLS TRAPPED. FRENCH POLICE ACTIVE. Repeated complaints have caused the French police to go fully into the activities of a man who has been engaging English dancing girls for “jobs” in Algeria and other places. It is alleged that though the girls are induced to sign contracts making out that they are taking on legitimate dancing engagements in cabarets or music halls, they find on reaching their destination that they are added to the harems of wealthy Eastern men. Once in the harems the girls are virtual slaves. Communication with the outer world is cut off, and they are prevented from getting into touch with representatives of the British Government. Letters written to their homes are intercepted by agents of the person responsible for “placing” them, and in time the victims are entirely at the mercy of those under whose roof they are living. Fickle Sheiks. If the local authorities are appealed to on behalf of the girls the persons concerned have only to produce the contracts that the girls have signed in ignorance of that to which they were committing themselves. Few of the girls realise that fickleness is the character-key-note of the sheiks into whose hands they have passed, and that when they fashion changes they are liable to be turned out into the streets to sink to the level of the white women who have earned the scorn and contempt of their own race because of their association as the playthings of coloured men.

It is alleged that the traffic is growing rather than abating owing to the increased demand on the part of the sheiks for this type of English dancing girl, particularly for Lancashire ones, who have always been favourites in Parisian night resorts frequented by Eastern visitors. Several police officers have been sent to the areas affected to trace the girls alleged to have been enticed into accepting these engagements, and the local French authorities have been instructed from Paris to afford facilities for the entry into the harems of sheiks and others known to harbour foreign women.