Crime Law Soc Change

DOI 10.1007/s10611-013-9436-z

Secret seducers
True tales of pimps in the red light district of Amsterdam

Marion van San & Frank Bovenkerk

# The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

Abstract At the end of the 1990s, a moral panic erupted in the Netherlands about the
phenomenon of what came to be known as ‘loverboys’. The suspicion was that a
growing number of Dutch girls were being groomed by handsome young men who
employed all sorts of devious methods to prepare their girlfriends for life as a
prostitute. Stories about a new generation of pimps, often of Moroccan origin,
regularly appeared in the Dutch media. In this article, based on ethnographic field-
work on pimps operating in the red-light district of Amsterdam, we describe the ways
in which these young men operate and how they justify their behaviour. On the basis
of empirical research we intend to present a more realistic picture of what goes on in
the prostitution industry and highlight the discrepancy between what is reported in the
media and what is actually happening in the prostitution sector. We also examine the
background to the moral panic about loverboys and the ways in which these young
men were supposedly able to induce many young girls into becoming prostitutes.

For more than a decade now, the Netherlands has been plagued by the criminal
practices of what are referred to as ‘loverboys’. This English term has a unique
definition in Dutch: loverboys are young men who use their seduction skills with the
aim of exploiting young girls as prostitutes. What we are actually dealing with here
are ordinary pimps and when we take a closer look at the modus operandi of these
young men, we find that there is nothing new under the sun. The story about a new
generation of pimps, often of Moroccan origin, who are busy grooming young and
innocent girls for prostitution that continues to pop up in the Dutch media, appears to
be little more than an urban legend.

M. van San (*)

Faculty of Social Sciences/Rotterdam Institute for Social Policy Research (RISBO), Erasmus University
Rotterdam, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: vansan@risbo.eur.nl

F. Bovenkerk
University of Amsterdam, Oudezijds Achterburgwal 237, 1012 DL Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: F.Bovenkerk@uu.nl
 M.v. San, F. Bovenkerk

We have argued elsewhere [3] that what began as a moral panic about loverboys
became a reality when young men started to re-enact and copy the moral panic. This
is probably one of the ways in which a real social problem develops: the panic
becomes a self-fulfilling example or, as Young [24] phrased it: fantasy is translated
into reality. In this article, we will let the main characters speak for themselves: the
young men who are the object of the panic explain how they began to participate in
the discourse on what loverboys are. Their actions can be seen as a form of protest or
social revenge in response to their low status.
Pimping is considered to be the ‘second oldest profession’ [17] and recruiting by
manipulating a romantic relationship is nothing new. At the end of the nineteenth
century, with industrialization and urbanization in full swing in the Netherlands, young
men were observed at the exit of the Central train station in Amsterdam (see Collard,
cited in [8]). They would accost girls who had obviously just arrived from the country-
side to find a job and then seduce them and make them pregnant. With the bad reputation
they soon had at home as unwed mothers, the men could easily pressure them into
becoming prostitutes (Reitman observed similar practices in the US).
In the 1960s and ‘70s there was an enormous growth in the sex industry in
Amsterdam and other Dutch cities. Foreign prostitutes from South America and the
Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia joined the ranks, and the Red
Light District in Amsterdam became a veritable tourist attraction. Window prostitu-
tion was now easily accessible for women. It was clear that virtually all these women
had a man at their side who they shared their earnings with. It was also clear what role
the men played in the world of prostitution: they provided protection. The former
neighbourhood pimps with their own little private business switched in the course of
the 1970s and 80s to the far more lucrative trade in drugs [13]. This created an
opening in the market. Brothel proprietors accepted the new pimps because they
depended on them for their supply of women, but only on the condition that they
operated discreetly.
At the end of the 1990s, a moral panic erupted in the Netherlands about the
phenomenon of what came to be known as ‘loverboys’. A growing number of Dutch
girls appeared to end up in prostitution as a result of their relationship with a certain kind
of boyfriend. What was noteworthy was that many of the girls began working as
‘window prostitutes’ as soon as they turned eighteen, which is the legal age for working
as a prostitute in the Netherlands. The suspicion was that many of these girls had gone
through an extensive period of grooming by handsome young men who were using all
sorts of devious methods to prepare their girlfriends for life as a prostitute. The moral
panic arose because a number of parents found themselves powerless to prevent their
daughters from falling into the hands of these young men. The young men allegedly
responsible were subsequently labelled public enemy No. 1 and initiatives were devel-
oped all over the country to warn young girls about their activities.
In this article, which is based on our conversations with a number of so-called
loverboys, we intend to reconstruct how their relationships with some girls ended
with the girls being involved in prostitution. We also intend to demonstrate how these
young men operate and what arguments they use to explain their behaviour. On the
basis of our empirical research we hope to paint a more realistic picture of what
currently goes on in the prostitution sector and to what extent there is a discrepancy
between what is reported in the media and what is actually happening in the sector. At
Secret seducers true tales of pimps in the red light

the end of this article we will further examine the background to the moral panic that
erupted at the end of the 1990s about the loverboys and the ways in which they were
allegedly able to coax many young girls into becoming prostitutes.

Ethnographic research on pimps in Amsterdam

Between 2004 and 2006, we carried out ethnographic research on pimps operating in
the red-light district of Amsterdam. The stories of victims of loverboys had been
given wide publicity and the popular image of loverboys was therefore mostly based
on statements made by young girls and on social workers’ interpretations of these
statements. The pimps were usually portrayed as handsome young men, often of
Moroccan descent, who appeared to be able to win over ‘weak’ girls, shower them
with gifts and then trick them into becoming prostitutes. The boys themselves had
never been given an opportunity to present their side of the story and nothing was
known about their version of events.
We first turned to the police precinct where the Red Light District was located. No
girls were recruited as prostitutes there, but prostitutes did work there and the district
was teeming with pimps. A district team of eight police officers monitored the daily
course of affairs at the brothels and the prostitution windows. In principle, they had
contact with all the women who worked there and checked their age and residence
permits. At the time of the study, the Red Light District had 200 prostitution
businesses and 350 prostitution windows, which were rented out in three daily shifts
of 8 h. Some of the businesses were run by one owner, but a large portion of the
prostitution and other vices were predominantly organized by sixteen criminal orga-
nizations that were already identified in 1995 [13].
With such a small police team, there was no way the contacts with the prostitutes
could be anything but superficial. The fact remains though that the team compiled
what they called a rogues’ gallery of 76 faces for their own use, without the police
authorities knowing about it.1 They were men the police team had the impression
were playing a leading role in the world of pimps. All of them had police records to
demonstrate their violent tendencies. In the course of our field work on the streets of
the Red Light District, we started to see and recognize more and more of them. We
sometimes walked around with the policemen patrolling the neighbourhood and
chatted with the women. These policemen knew which girls were the victims of
loverboys. They were young white girls who sat at the windows looking glum and
obviously did not want to be there. You could also recognize them by the tattoos they
had done, with the name of their first pimp. It was difficult for the police to develop a
relation of trust with the women, they said, because the pimps told their girls the
police were all corrupt and collaborated with the brothel owners.

1
In 2000, the ban on prostitution was lifted in the Netherlands. The Amsterdam authorities wanted to show
to the outside world that administrative measures were more effective than criminal measures and, in line
with this new policy, surveillance of the Red Light District was drastically reduced. This was much to the
dismay of the vice team, which was well aware of the severity of the exploitation. The team decided on their
own initiative, and without informing their superiors, to compile a rogues’ gallery. When the Chief of
Police became aware of this through our report to the city council, he was not amused.
 M.v. San, F. Bovenkerk

We never got to see the pimps themselves this way. Later, without the police
accompanying us or via the television circuit at the police station, we got to see young
men ducking into the dark alleyways of Amsterdam when they saw the police
coming, including plainclothesmen. However, they were not the 76 men from the
album. These were the boys who seduced the girls and we were able to observe how
they picked up the money and served as guards to keep the prostitutes from leaving.
Obviously, we did more than just follow the police around. In the course of our
research we came into contact with a social worker working for an evangelically
inspired organisation with an office in the middle of the Red Light District. Night
after night, armed with bags full of bibles and informational material, we accompa-
nied her on her rounds of the area in order to get in touch with the prostitutes. One of
the more popular booklets we distributed described the story of a young girl who had
been manipulated into becoming a prostitute by the cunning tricks of a handsome
young man who turned out to be a pimp. Many of the ladies we spoke to claimed to
recognize themselves in the story. According to their accounts, they had also been
‘tricked’ by their boyfriends. On the other hand, we also met girls who told us that
they had made their own decision to become prostitutes and that it was only later that
they had met a male companion who got used to getting a share of the money they
earned. We became more and more interested in these young men, but since they
tended to remain out of sight even during our rounds with the social worker -
probably because they preferred to keep a safe distance as long as we were there -
we realised that we had to find another way to get in touch with them. This was the
beginning of a long and sometimes discouraging search, which ended in the prisons
where such men – who were arrested and prosecuted on other charges - were serving
out their sentences. From police information made available to us, we knew that these
men were in prison for pimping, even though most of them had been convicted for
violent offences, drug offences, or rape. The men were approached under the pretext
of interviewing them on prison conditions. We found thirteen of them, all of whom
were willing to speak to us in prison. The selection was made on the basis of our
conversations with police officers who had been involved in individual loverboy
cases. They described the thirteen cases as ’typical’ loverboy cases, in which it was
obvious that the young men had one or more girls working for them as prostitutes; the
evidence presented in the court case included telephone taps; and the girls had
eventually reported the boys to the police. We were unable to verify the information
in the files, as the law in the Netherlands does not allow access to the criminal records
of prisoners who are going to be interviewed. Therefore, we had to rely on the
information we received from the police.
Our interviews with the pimps took place between the middle of June and the end
of December 2004 and partly in 2005. All conversations lasted for about 2 to 3 h,
were conducted using a topic list and were recorded on tape. In all cases, the
conversation went relatively smoothly. At first, there was some suspicion but this
soon melted away as the interview progressed. It was somewhat difficult to get the
conversation going because we did not start off by asking our respondents about their
pimping activities. The police had advised us against bringing up this topic immedi-
ately because in their experience these boys were usually reluctant to talk about their
pimping activities and most of them would deny ever having been a pimp. In our
experience, however, young men often enjoy talking about their criminal activities.
Secret seducers true tales of pimps in the red light

So, to get the conversation going we began by asking them about their experiences in
prison and then quickly changed the subject to the various types of criminality they
had been involved in. Given the fact that many of their activities (which were mainly
drug-related) were linked to prostitution areas, it was relatively easy to steer the
conversation to their pimping activities or to the practices of other pimps. As
mentioned, most respondents denied ever having worked as pimps, but they did
claim an intimate knowledge of the prostitution sector as a by-product of their drug-
related activities. As the interviews progressed, the young men seemed to relish the
opportunity to tell their story to a woman. They never mentioned the fact that the
topic that was being discussed was not officially on the agenda. Apparently, the
interviewer was able to build up enough trust to avoid any awkward questions. It
should also be noted that most respondents had the ‘gift of the gab’, were quite
charming and made frequent flattering comments regarding the female interviewer.
The young men were all between 21 and 24 years of age. Some of them were the
children of Moroccan and Turkish guest labourers who had come to the Netherlands in
the 1970s. Others had migrated at a young age with their parents from Surinam or
Curacao, or were born in the Netherlands. They all belonged to the Dutch underclass.
Their parents had come to the Netherlands to build a better future for themselves and
their children, but judging from the young men’s stories, very few had succeeded. None
of our respondents had completed their secondary education and none of them had a job.
All of them had been involved from a young age in all sorts of criminality, such as street
robberies, armed hold-ups, drug trafficking and prostitution. It was also found that their
parents had received little to no education and belonged to the lowest income segment of
the population.

Ways of seducing

The men were also willing to discuss our real questions on pimping, even if only to
convince us they were not loverboys. They were initially suspicious but after some time,
once they realized we really were interested in them and not just in confirming the
stereotype loverboy story, they opened up. Of course their answers were self-serving and
to start with, they had never been pimps themselves. In the criminal hierarchy, pimps
occupy a much lower position than drug dealers or bank robbers. ‘But do you know
anyone who is a loverboy?’ we asked. ‘Yeah, sure,’ they said, ‘so and so is a real
authentic loverboy.’ After we suggested talking about ‘so and so,’ the rest of the
conversation was implicitly about themselves. Several indicators revealed that they
had personally lived through what they were describing. This was apparent from, among
other things, the amount of detail in their stories (for example, how they had seduced a
girl, how much the girls earned in a day, etc.)
It is striking that the pimps claimed it was the girls who took the initiative rather than
them. The girls offered their services, or a girlfriend they had had for years was so scared
of losing her boyfriend that she begged him to let her earn money for him, if only he
would not break up with her. The pimps’ stories indicate that prostitutes are not always
such passive victims as they are portrayed in the standard version of the loverboy story.
‘They want it themselves, they really do. I just see to it that my girlfriend works in a safe
way,’ one respondent said. They emphatically denied ever using any kind of violence.
 M.v. San, F. Bovenkerk

Judging from the cell phone conversations tapped by the police, in a number of cases
this was an outright lie. In other cases, the argument seemed convincing, since we have
found it is rarely necessary to use violence with girls who are in love.
The men were sly and cunning and knew how to work selectively. They went for
unstable girls with low self-esteem. ‘First you look at the girl. How smart is she?
Because there are girls who are dangerous. They might go to the police or do
something like that. It is better if they are on the stupid side. Really not much more
than a body.’ They told us that it was easy to tell whether a girl could be manipulated
into prostitution because their victims shared a similar characteristic: they had all
sorts of problems at home, as a result of which they were unstable enough to be easily
influenced. In the study of victimology circumstances such as these are referred to as
victim proneness [7]. Some people run a higher risk of becoming victims of crime
than others. It would appear that these young men had developed a sixth sense for
detecting vulnerable girls. As one of them told us: ‘Listen, these are mostly problem
girls. They have problems with their parents or they have debts; a long-term rela-
tionship has recently ended or they just broke up with their boyfriend. They're at an
all-time low, and then a loverboy comes along. Someone with a lot of money, who
takes her out to all the right places, pays for everything, spoils her or what have you.
Eventually, there comes a time when the girl who gets everything from her man is
expected to do something for him in return, but they often don't know how. Sooner or
later these girls are simply going to be manipulated’.
At bars and clubs, on the street or on the Internet, they kept an eye out for girls
with a slutty look. These were girls who behaved in a certain way (‘she talks tough
and she smokes dope’), dressed in a certain way (‘she wears a top and you can see
half of her tits’), hung around in bars at night, and were easy to get into bed.
Their tactics worked best with white Dutch girls. They had a lot more trouble with
the daughters of immigrants, ‘because those families have respect for each other.’ In
their view, this was not the case with Dutch girls: ‘Dutch girls really are the easiest.
(…) Nowadays, there are girls of thirteen or fourteen years old who have already lost
their virginity. They go to clubs and discos and stay away from home for a whole
weekend. They want to go out, they want new clothes, but they don’t have the money.
When a loverboy comes along and the girl spots him and he seems like a nice boy,
things happen… Meeting a loverboy is like hitting the jackpot, you know what I
mean?’ One pimp told us that it was not only easier to get Dutch girls into prostitu-
tion, but that they were worth less than other girls and therefore deserved to end up as
prostitutes. ‘Culturally and religiously, a Dutch girl is little more than a pig to a
loverboy. She’s nothing, she’s of no value. When that’s what you’re thinking, you can
completely block out your emotions.’ As mentioned, most loverboys were reluctant
to manipulate the daughters of immigrants into prostitution, especially when it came
to girls leading a pious life. ‘We are obligated to treat Moroccan girls as we would
treat our own sisters; we can’t treat them as rags. You can’t just make a Moroccan girl
work for you. (…) Listen, when a Moroccan girl wants to do it, that’s different. But if
she goes to school and wears a headscarf, it’s just not right’.
In the beginning, they did their best to make the girls fall in love with them so they
could manipulate them. They went out with them and made all kinds of promises
(‘the two of us are going to open a club together’) and spent a lot of money on them.
The next step was to break the girls’ ties with their friends and relatives and
Secret seducers true tales of pimps in the red light

schoolmates. ‘What you do is to isolate them and make sure that she only has contact
with you. If you treat a girl well and give her the idea that her future is with you, she
will abandon her family and everything else for you.’
‘And then you act like you are suddenly broke,’ one of the young men told us.
‘The girls are so in love by then that they are willing to turn tricks just this once if I
say I need the money. After a couple of days, it is like the most ordinary thing in the
world.’ The boys also told us about the fact that some pimps gave the girls drugs to
force them into prostitution and there was also mention of voodoo techniques, but we
never came across an actual example of the use of such techniques during our
interviews. It seems indeed that voodoo is a somewhat illogical way of manipulating
white Dutch girls. It was mentioned by the boys as a possible technique to manipulate
girls, but there is no evidence that they had ever actually used it themselves.
The respondents told us that the lifestyle of some pimps in the towns where they
lived made it obvious to anyone that they were involved in prostitution. Certain girls
were attracted to these young men and they would do anything to curry their favour.
‘Some girls get to know you and then they just call you. They think it’s the ‘tough
thing’ to do. They’ll tell you: I need money and I want to be with you. (…) When
you’re the one calling the shots, they want to be your girlfriend. ‘The boys would give
fate a helping hand by presenting themselves in a way designed to make an impres-
sion on the girls. As they saw it, it was important for a pimp to build up status. Status
can be acquired by wearing designer clothes, driving fancy cars and spending money
like water. When these conditions are met, the girls will flock to them, or so the pimps
told us.
The pimps were smart enough to have insight into the girls’ weaknesses and they
exhibited considerable self-control in pretending to be madly in love for weeks or
sometimes even years before they made their move. Then the hard thing was to have
the girls accept sharing their fate with other girls. Well-known techniques in this
world (see also the techniques of Black Players in the Secret World of Pimps
described in the classical American ethnography by Christina and Richard Milner
[14]) are to stimulate the rivalry among the girls and appoint a favourite bottom
woman, i.e. the pimp’s most experienced or trusted prostitute. One of them told us:
‘One of the most important things is that you make sure that she is competing with
someone else. You have her, but you also have another girl, and then you do little
things to keep her thinking for weeks, you know. Or you make sure that she sees you
with the other woman. You tell her that the other one works for you, whether that’s
true or not, and then she will automatically want to compete. At some point, they will
accept anything from you. The girl will be thinking: he is also going out with this girl
and that girl, but that’s alright as long as I can also be his girlfriend. It seems he really
doesn’t need me anymore. When he wants money, he can also get it from her and her
and her. But the thing is, this will only make the girl try harder.’ All of this is
strikingly similar to the findings of the physician A. Heijmans more than half a
century ago. Heijmans [9] described exactly the phenomenon we encountered in the
behaviour of present-day loverboys: a pimp will pit the various women working for
him against each other in order to bind them to him. Heijmans concluded that ‘the
prostitute can be stimulated to compete with other prostitutes to gain the procurer’s
favour. This explains in part the prostitute’s bondage to the procurer, notwithstanding
the disdainful characterization of him as a parasite, brute etc.’.
 M.v. San, F. Bovenkerk

The most striking aspect of our interviews was the great variety in the statements
about the pimps’ lives and how they justified their conduct and style of operating. The
scientific stage model made by psychologists and used by the courts to recognize the
loverboy methods was too general. The fact remains though that these men, even when
they were telling their own personal stories, constantly referred to the stereotype media
image of loverboys. It was as if they had started to believe in it themselves. This could be
the result of the used research methods, mainly talking about pimping with the pimps. It
could be the case that these pimps are not only talking about themselves but mentioning
everything they have heard about pimping. This could also explain why they referred to
voodoo. A link was also repeatedly drawn with the dominant image whenever they
talked about girls who left the life of prostitution, sometimes after a lengthy period of
animosity. According to these men, the girls followed the fixed pattern so forcefully
presented by social workers when speaking to their mothers, the police or their old
networks. In reality, their own role in what was now called a violent relationship of
exploitation was much larger. As one of the pimps said, ‘After 4 years with me, she
suddenly turned around and said I was a loverboy. She must have seen that movie or
heard those stories. She wanted to get rid of me and she thought that was a good way to
get at me.’
The boys naturally gave us their own version of events and did everything to present
themselves in a positive light in the interviews, but at least some girls appear to have
played a more active role than we might think at first. A review of the relevant literature
(see e.g. [6]) shows that girls working as prostitutes often find it difficult to leave the
business because they have trouble distancing themselves from the men who exploit
them. It would appear that girls not only play an active role when they enter the world of
prostitution, but once they have started also often participate in perpetuating their own
exploitative situation. In the end, the prostitution environment – and there comes a point
when this is the only environment they know - offers the girls a sense of security and as a
result, they cannot or will not break away from their situation. There is no need for a
pimp to supervise his girls around the clock, because he knows they are not likely to run
away. It became apparent from the interviews that the pimps are rarely in the vicinity of
the prostitution windows when the girls are working. They usually spend their time
going to coffee shops, visiting relatives, dealing drugs, or working out in the gym. On
occasion they take the girls to work or pick them up afterwards, but these chores are
usually taken care of by the helpers.
Lastly, it struck us that these men were definitely not handsome boys, in fact they
looked more like the older men in the rogues’ gallery the Amsterdam police had
compiled. For the first time, we were hearing first-hand information about the social
organization of the modern pimping system. It was now finally clear to us what we had
observed at night in the Red Light District and at the police station. It turned out that
most of them knew each other from small prostitution areas all over Holland. Within
these areas, there were clearly two different kinds of pimps. There were the older ones
who did not actually come to the prostitution districts that much, and there were the
young men, often still teenagers, whom they sponsored and supervised. These young
men spent time in the prostitution districts, where they ‘protected’ the prostitutes from
the police – in fact, to prevent the girls from reporting them to the police - and even more
importantly, to make sure they did not switch to the crew of a different pimping boss.
One of the boys told us: ‘Pimps don’t watch their girls’ every move. They have people
Secret seducers true tales of pimps in the red light

for that. (…) The worst that can happen to a pimp is that his girl is snatched away by
another pimp. Because you lose a source of income? No, because you lose face.’
Rival pimps pose a real danger but according to the boys the girls themselves pose the
biggest risk. When a pimp runs off with another girl, his former girlfriend will not
hesitate to make false statements against him, or so the boys told us. ‘They turn to
prostitution with dreams of a nice future and when they see their prince on his white
horse ride off with another princess, they want to get back at him. I for one don’t believe
any girl who says she was forced to work somewhere for 2 years. If she says: I was
forced to work there for a week, I'll believe her, because you can’t do much in a week.
But if she says: I was forced to work for a year, then I'll just laugh in her face and tell her
she’s lying’.

Imitating the pimp and ho culture

The research on which this article is based was designed to examine the perspective
of young men who enter into relationships with the aim of exploiting girls as
prostitutes. The stories of these young men remind us of the autobiographies of
famous American pimps like Iceberg Slim [12] or the world of pimps described by K-
flex Nasheed in The Art of Macking [15]. “Women are made to be humiliated, they
have to obey and if they don’t, we need to take measures” and so on. What emerged
from our interviews was that the classic loverboy story as told by the media rarely
happened in the real world. Although we did find examples of young men purposely
looking for women to start a relationship with, shower them with gifts, and then force
them into prostitution we found that there were many different ways in which girls
ended up as prostitutes. Some girls were already working as prostitutes and only later
came in contact with a pimp. In some cases, it was the girl who showered her
loverboy with gifts in order to prevent him from leaving her. Other girls entered into
a business relationship with a young man and subsequently went on to work as
prostitutes (see for research on relationships between pimps and prostitutes in Am-
sterdam and in particular business relationships also [21]: 42–49, 160–161). In short,
there are many variations to the stereotypical story about loverboys that are constantly
being repeated in the media (see [3]). Some instances of behaviour consistent with the
stereotype of the loverboy appeared to have been inspired by either the popular media
or the example of other more successful pimps. The pimps we interviewed were
obviously motivated by the desire to exonerate themselves, but there may well be
some truth to their statements about women who attempt to extricate themselves from
the world of prostitution by resorting to the discourse of popular media accounts.
Some were convinced that the girls had been inspired by these stories to phrase their
complaint to the police in such a way as to make it seem as if they had experienced
the standard loverboy story.
The public discourse around pimps is usually dominated by the perspective of the
victim, but this approach stands in the way of a better understanding of the problem. Not
only does it strip the girl or prostitute of her individuality – victimhood is, after all, no
more than a condition or a status - but it also reduces the problem to the cliché of the
pitiful and innocent victim exploited by a brutal villain. In reality, according to Weitzer
[23], young prostitutes often contribute to their own situation. The prevailing image of
 M.v. San, F. Bovenkerk

the current pimping problem, namely that the pimp is always a ruthless perpetrator and
the prostitute a helpless victim, represents a step backwards in light of the insight gained
by victimologists that the problem usually lies in the relationship between two people.
Ine Vanwesenbeeck, a Dutch researcher and feminist scholar of international repute,
likewise warned against taking for granted victim stories about girls working as
prostitutes. “When researchers have difficulty understanding rational, not to mention
positive, reasons for choosing sex work and find it easier to think of prostitutes as
victims, it is understandable that sex workers will rather stress their victim status and
negative motivations for working” ([19]: 259).
Given the fact that the Dutch loverboys and their prostitutes had been, until
recently, regular school students, we continued our research by focusing on the
mechanism of obsessive infatuation to explain these charged relationships. However,
we gradually realized that there might be a link between the contemporary practices
of young people at the age where they become sexually active and the choice to
become a prostitute. This is not so much about sexual acts as it is about sex education,
the degree to which coercion in relationships is considered acceptable, the role of the
internet, and the effect of nudity and pornography on television. It should come as no
surprise that young people growing up in families where sex is a taboo subject may
turn to pornography for their sex education – as was true of most of the pimps we
interviewed – and that their ideas about sex differ from those of young people raised
in other types of families. Our next question addressed the extent to which the
dominant American video clips distributed daily around the globe influence the
sexual behaviour of young people in other countries. Many of these music videos
glorify sexually promiscuous women (‘bitches’) and overdressed macho men wearing
copious amounts of gold jewellery. The Afro-American pimp and ho culture centred
around flashy pimps has been with us since the beginning of the 20th century, but it is
only in recent years that this culture has become mainstream, as a result of popular
hip hop artists such as Snoop Doggy Dog, Ice T, and 50 Cents promoting themselves
as pimps. Dutch music channels too are responsible for disseminating music videos
portraying ‘pimps’ and ‘sluts’ as role models. The obvious assumption here is that the
images from the video clips are being copied by young people in the Netherlands.
The young men we interviewed were all familiar with this culture: growing up as
adolescents in the Netherlands, they had been inundated by the various music
channels with images of successful pimps with ‘sluts’ at their beck and call. It would
appear that ‘the style’ they adopt to look like real pimps is largely based on what they
see in these video clips. One of the young men described how a successful pimp is
supposed to present himself: ‘These pimps are all dressed in the same style. They
wear a coat with a fur collar in winter and all that, they dress like pimps. (…) When
you go out, you make sure to have a stack of bills in your hip pocket. (…) And many
of these guys put their head forward, like this (he demonstrates). And for example,
when you go out, you don’t talk much, but you act as if you are a serious person. (…).
Everyone comes to greet you and give you respect and the girls notice that. And most
of these girls are simply stupid. They will think these boys are making a lot of money.
But they aren’t. They are making all their money of off her. But the girls don’t realize
that. Even when the girl is working for him, she will still think that he has his own
business and that he makes a lot of money, but that’s not true. So all you have to do is
act tough and the girls will come to you’.
Secret seducers true tales of pimps in the red light

However, it has never been conclusively demonstrated that television images

directly influence human behaviour. The academic literature on the subject has little
more to offer than a study by Collins et al. [5], which showed that watching sex on
TV may precipitate the sexual initiation of young people between the ages of twelve
and seventeen. The effect can also be indirect, such as when young people adopt hip
hop music and the accompanying pimp and ho style. There is no doubt that black
ghetto culture has entered Dutch teenage bedrooms. Young girls are trying their best
to emulate sexy superstars such as Beyoncé by gyrating their hips and shaking their
buttocks on the dance floor.
The moral panic about the behaviour of young pimps in the Netherlands is also
undoubtedly ethnically charged. Regardless of the diverse ethnic origins of both perpe-
trators and victims, public opinion is mainly concerned with Moroccan (or Antillean)
perpetrators overpowering white, innocent girls with their charms in order to exploit
them ruthlessly [2, 3]. The popular music of famous rappers and the violent and
promiscuous youth culture coming from the American ghettos to the Netherlands via
the media have created an atmosphere where the sons of immigrants feel justified to
‘make their move’. All initiatives to draw attention to the scourge of the young pimps are
designed to warn against men with bad intent and the moral message is always that ‘our
women’ are under threat. But there is something else going on here too. The undercur-
rent of the moral panic about pimps in the Netherlands is closely related to one of the
failures of the Dutch multicultural society, namely the love market.

The Dutch love market

The emergence of the Dutch multicultural society came about relatively smoothly
during its initial stages. Immigrants arriving in the early 1960s from the former Dutch
East Indies, the Moluccan Islands, Surinam, the Dutch Antilles and, later on, immigrant
workers from eight countries around the Mediterranean and the Cape Verde Islands were
fairly easily accepted by the indigenous population. This can be deduced from the
number of members of the majority entering into relationships with members of ethnic
minorities. The number of interethnic marriages is sometimes used as a tool to measure
the level of mutual tolerance and amalgamation. Van der Most van Spijk [18] calculated
that, at the end of the 1980s, one in three Surinamese (male and female) and two in three
Antilleans were married to a Dutch partner. Veenman [20] found that 51 % of all
Moluccans were involved in a ‘mixed relationship’. Van Praag [16] reported that almost
50 % of all South-European heads of households were married to a Dutch spouse and in
the case of Italians the number was as high as 80 %. It should be noted that these
developments took place in a country where only a generation ago marriages between
partners from different Christian denominations were frowned upon. The history of
interethnic mixing was until recently part of the success story of the Dutch integration
policy. However, all this changed in the early 1990s.
Turkish and Moroccan guest labourers had begun to arrive in the Netherlands at
end of the 1960s, early 1970s. These men were either unmarried or ‘acting single’, i.e.
they were married but their wives had stayed behind. They lived with other men in
boarding-houses and at first they seemed quite willing to join the prevailing
‘interethnic’ trend in the Netherlands. Exact numbers are not known, but many
 M.v. San, F. Bovenkerk

entered into relationships with Dutch women. Voets [22] noted a significant number
of marriages between Turkish and Moroccan men and Dutch women. Half a decade
later, the situation was dramatically reversed. In 1994, Veenman found that only 4 %
of Moroccans and 2 % of Turkish men were married to a Dutch woman.
So what had happened in the meantime? One of the major factors was the Dutch
government’s decision that there was no longer a need for the constant renewal of short-
term labour contracts and work permits. Anyone who had spent enough time in the
Netherlands on a residence permit was now allowed to reunite with his family or fiancée.
Almost half of all those who had worked in the Netherlands as guest labourers returned
to their country of origin, but those who stayed took advantage of the opportunity to
effectuate a primary or secondary family reunion. This policy decision had a profound
(unintended and unforeseen) effect on the character of Turkish and Moroccan immigrant
communities in the Netherlands. The ‘guest labourers’ who had always been living in
boarding-houses were now in a position to buy a house of their own and settle down
with their families. However, the workings of the housing market resulted in most of
them ending up in traditional Dutch working class areas. As members of cultures where
honour plays a major role, they subsequently turned inwards and became focused on
protecting the reputation of their women and other family members. Relationships with
the outside world, intimate or otherwise, were abruptly severed. The indigenous resi-
dents would have perhaps been able to tolerate the ‘newcomers’ if only they had been
more willing to participate in neighbourhood activities. But they were not, and that was
what made the resident Dutch communities feel rejected. The most often heard com-
plaint was not that the foreigners were ‘different’, but that they did not participate [4].
As it turned out, most of the immigrants were also unwilling to participate in the
Dutch love market. Hooghiemstra [10] calculated that no less than 75 % of both first
and second generation Moroccans and Turks married a wife from their country of
origin (so-called ‘import brides’). Another 18 % found a marriage partner within their
own ethnic group in the Netherlands while only 4 % married outside their own ethnic
group. The life stories of these youngsters may be very different from those of their
parents, but they still seem to opt almost exclusively for partners from their own
background and religion.
Resistance to the multicultural society at the personal level has come from two
sides. Many immigrant parents still consider it unthinkable that their sons or daugh-
ters would ever bring home a girl or boyfriend from another ethnic group. Converse-
ly, Hondius [11] reported that most Dutch women married to Muslims are also faced
with rejection from their own social environment. Until this day, relationships
between Dutch women and Moroccan men are frowned upon by many and there is
always the fear that a Dutch girl who falls in love with a Moroccan man has been
snared by a loverboy.
This public perception constitutes the undercurrent of the moral panic about
loverboys. The various immigrant groups have produced second and third generations
of descendants and there are still groups among them who appear to be unable or
unwilling to participate in the mainstream of society. It is precisely these groups of
young men at the bottom of the ethnic hierarchy that are causing particularly annoying
problems of criminality [1]. Such groups have been the focus of a range of policies
aimed at minorities, but instead of seizing their chances many have opted for short term
criminal careers over the long hard slog of getting ahead in society via education and
Secret seducers true tales of pimps in the red light

work. These young men also appear to be irresistible to a certain type of Dutch girl. The
young men we interviewed all told us in their own words about the tensions in the Dutch
love market and about the fears of Dutch parents about their daughters hooking up with a
foreign boyfriend. As one respondent put it succinctly: ‘Most girls here in the North had
better not bring home a foreigner. It’s really bad here in Friesland. But those girls, before
they start to work or come into contact with a loverboy, already have problems at home.
(…) I know a guy who met a girl, but her parents are real peasants, you know, they really
don’t like Moroccans. But what do you know, he gets invited to their house and the
mother becomes really fond of him. He was acting a bit like a Dutchman, you know:
drink beer with them, go to their parties. And that girl was totally nuts about him. She
came to me saying: yes, I’ll do anything for him, and that’s when I thought, ok girl, you
are going down (he laughs). Within two months she was working for him. But some
girls are just taken away from their parents. They may have a good relationship with
their parents but they are just taken away.’ But how do you manage to do that? ‘Some
parents don’t like foreigners much. They usually ask: are you still in school? No. Do you
have a job? No. Are you on welfare? Yes. And then they’ll say: he’s not right for our
daughter and this and that. But the boy will make sure that the girl is completely crazy
about him. The girl ends up fighting with her parents, and there will come a time when
she will just say to her parents: screw you, I don’t care’. This respondent’s story is
exemplary of other stories told to us. Most of the young men made mention of their
difficult relationships with the parents of their Dutch girlfriends. In their eyes, this had
everything to do with the parents’ prejudices against them. All of them mentioned the
prejudice and the discrimination they were faced with as representatives of the Dutch
underclass, and the reaction of the parents to the relationships they struck up with their
daughters was, in their eyes, a variation on the same theme. In the words of one of our
respondents: ‘Her stepmother doesn’t like Moroccans, even though she has a foreign
daughter of her own (the stepmother’s adopted daughter was born in Colombia). So, on
one occasion me and my girlfriend (who works as a prostitute) arranged to meet them in
the weekend, but when I phoned them I was supposed to call myself ‘Michael’. Because
when I say ‘Said’, she’ll know it’s a foreign name. Then the mother said: yes, you come
and visit, as if everything was ok. But of course I couldn’t go’.
Reasoning from the ghetto-idiom adopted by many of today's young adults, being
a pimp is a form of revenge for social exclusion and discrimination. This revenge
motif also comes up in Milner’s ethnographic description of African-American pimps
[14]. The customers of the ho’s are usually white, which means that the pimps make
their money off white customers. However, the highest status goes to pimps who are
in the business of exploiting white prostitutes. These pimps have become the symbol
of resistance against the subordinate position of the immigrant underclass. As one of
our respondent summarized his position eloquently: ‘What if you’ve been expelled
from school because you have two gold teeth in your mouth? What if you can’t get a
traineeship because of that? What do you do when they keep sending you from pillar
to post? They all look down on you. When I apply for a job by telephone they always
invite me to come by, but as soon as they see my face, they’ll say no, this person is
not right for the position. So when you’re always being dismissed and disrespected
but you must survive in this country, what are you supposed to do? Such a person will
think: you know what? If you spit on me, I’ll spit on you. I’ll make your girls work
for me and I’ll laugh in your face. That’s how these guys end up thinking’.
 M.v. San, F. Bovenkerk

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