Prostitution: Limited Legality
Prostitution is not specifically addressed in the law.
Brothel Ownership: Illegal
Pimping: Illegal
Prostitution now exists in a legal gray area in Bulgaria, a small but important country for the European sex trade. Women are sent abroad by the thousands each year to work as prostitutes, often against their will, and many others are forced into prostitution within the country’s borders.
Opponents of legal prostitution argue that illegal operations flourish in environments where paying for sex is permitted, and that human trafficking follows the demand. The goal of prohibiting sex-for-money is to reduce the demand, and thus curtail trafficking if not stamp it out entirely...
While the front-burner issue in Bulgaria is the export of women into forced prostitution abroad, Ms. [Antoaneta]Vassileva of the antitrafficking commission said that 45 percent of trafficking takes place within the country, often from poor rural villages to the big cities and resorts along the Black Sea coast. The country’s chief prosecutor, Boris Velchev, who was at the forum, described what he called a double standard' in the treatment of those forced into prostitution abroad and attitudes toward those domestically, who he said receive less attention and are more likely to be blamed than treated as victims."
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