Prostitution in Greece is Legal & Illegal

Havent got that desperate yet and hope I never do, but hear its inexpensive, about 60 EU a trick.

Female prostitution is legal with periodic medical checks administered by state appointed doctors. Brothels exist in Athens and other cities but are rarely alluded to. Same with escort services. Certain newspapers advertise openly; both in, and out calls. Male prostitution is illegal. Why pay for something you can get for free?

Harry's Note to Men: Greece is crawling with attractive women from all over the world, in summer especially. Of course there are never enough oriental women to satisfy me.

The Greek male is the main customer of ladies of the night, many of whom are employed against their will. They are called trafficked women and are lured to Greece with promises of jobs as waitresses or what have you and upon arrival, robbed of their passports, beaten and made to work in brothels. Greece has the worst record in Europe for failing to combat this issue. Bravo!

Also strip bars should be avoided as they are clip joints and will rip you off for drink prices etc. Never give them your credit card! Athens'Metaxourgio area is the so called red light district and nothing like Amsterdam. Also the areas south of Omonia Sq. in Athens and south of Platea Victorias in Athens as well.

Good News for sex workers: The Olympics, which the more I learn about the more I see it for the scam it is, will bring thousands of potential customers looking for hookers, whores, whoores, what have you. Business will improve vastly as foreigners will likely pay more than the legally set price for various services.

Probe Into Huge Prostitution Racket

Public Order Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis vowed yesterday to stamp out corruption in the police force, following allegations that police in central Greece were involved in a huge prostitution racket that mayhave traded in 1,200 foreign women over the last 10 years.

"All of these rackets that shame the Greek police will be crushed," Chrysochoidis said yesterday. "We willget to the root of this."

According to the newspaper Eleftherotypia, which broke the story on Monday, it took the police Internal Affairs department five months of investigations to file two bulky reports which were presented to public prosecutors "a few days ago." According to the newspaper, the racket - which was known locally as the "meat machine" - comprised "businessmen," police of varying ranks as well as an employee of a prosecutor's office who allegedly tried to extort money from the racket. According to testimony, the paper said, "the racket, which was based in Trikala and Karditsa... had moved more than 1,200 women in the last 10 years, with a turnover of more than 35 billion drachmas for all the procurers across Greece."

Among the officers said to be involved were two who were in PASOK MP Christos Mangoufis's personal detail. "I have asked for their resignation and I have their resignations in my pocket," Mangoufis said onMonday. "They said they wanted the truth to shine."

Investigators heard that police officers would visit night clubs in which foreign women were working andwere provided with sexual services for which they did not pay, in return for providing protection to the club.

A few weeks ago a police department employee who reportedly gave information on the racket injured himself in an attempted suicide. After recovering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound he retracted his earlier claims, Eleftherotypia said on Dec 7, 2000. An infamous day all round.

But the one thing we don’t need to live with is the forced prostitution of women and the exploitation of children forced to beg at traffic lights. Combating the sex rackets, however, is going to be particularly difficult, seeing the huge demand for prostitution in Greece. Grigoris Lazos, an academic and special adviser to the Public Order Ministry committee on trafficking said last June that the turnover from the exploitation of women and children forced into prostitution in Greece totaled an astronomical 6 billion euros over the last 10 years. (Consider the fact that the narcotics trade in Greece is estimated to have an annual turnover of about 1 billion euros and you get an idea of the size of the problem). Lazos was speaking at a news conference heralding a public awareness campaign against sexual exploitation conducted by the Stop Now team of the non-governmental Center for Research and Action for Peace. In 1990, the number of victims of sexual exploitation came to 2,100. It hit a record 21,700 in 1997. There has been a slight decline since, which Lazos attributed to more intensive policing and economic problems leading to a shortage of cash among customers. He said 19,500 were forced into prostitution in 2000, among whom were about 1,000 children aged 13, 14 and 15. Lazos’s research has shown that in the decade from 1992 to 2002, men paid 200 million visits to prostitutes. That would translate into 55,000 visits per day. This means that apart from the familiar problems of bringing policy into effect — sloppiness, lack of urgency, lack of professionalism and accountability among those entrusted with doing this — difficulties are presented by the fact that prostitution is so widespread and tolerated to such an extent. When a large number of men in a small town, for example, patronise the dives in which women are on offer, society begins to tolerate the poison, thinking that it is immune to it. This creates a whirlpool of moral equivocation. The money involved is so much that police officers can be tempted to look the other way. Even if they are not on the take, they may be loath to stir up reaction by cracking down on something tolerated by everyone else in the same small society. And it goes on and on.