November 19, 2024
Police in Amsterdam’s redlight district have taken a unique approach in a call for information from the public, pertaining to a 2009 unsolved murder.
A hologram of the victim, a teenage sex-worker, will be displayed for one week in a window of the Red Light District.
The 3D hologram of the victim who is clad in washed denim hot pants, a leopard bra, and heels, leans towards the glass, breathes on it, and writes “H E L P.”
As well as the hologram, a bulk text message is being sent to those who were in or near the Red Light District on 20 February 2009.
In 2009, a teenage sex worker was brutally murdered in De Wall. Bernadett Szabo was born in 1989 in Nyíregyháza, Hungary, and was just 18 years old when she moved to Amsterdam and started working in the Red Light District. She stood out for her short, white-blonde hair, and a large, black line-work snake tattoo spanning her chest and abdomen.
She told the women she worked alongside that she did not have a pimp, and they said Bernadett, who went by Betty or Beatrix, would often work long hours, sometimes 14 hour shifts, seven days a week. Eventually she became pregnant, earning the nickname "penguin" as she kept working even while heavily pregnant with her son.
Known for playing loud music while she worked, her friends and fellow sex workers became worried when they heard silence coming from her room one cold night on 20 February 2009. Around 1am they went to check in on her, only to find Betty violently stabbed to death in a pool of her own blood. She had mostly been stabbed in the neck.
Although it appeared that she had managed to press the alarm button, no one had responded.
Betty's earnings for the day were not found in her room. Police believe the perpetrator may have stolen it.
DNA was collected from five used condoms found in a wastepaper bin in Betty's room. Investigators hoped to identify the men who had spent time with the victim on the day of her murder in order to rule them out as suspects.
A suspect was arrested earlier in the investigation, but let go due to lack of evidence. After that, the case went cold.
Anne Dreijer-Heemskerk of the Cold Case Team said of Betty’s death:
“Although every murder case is of course sad, Betty's story has many poignant aspects. A young girl, only nineteen years old, who is torn from life in a terrible way. And she didn't have it easy before her death either. She worked long hours as a sex worker and continued to work until just before the birth of her son. That son was placed in a foster family and never had the chance to get to know his mother.”
Betty’s son was only a few months old at the time of her murder, and went into foster care.
In the Netherlands prostitution is legal, and has been since 2000.
The Red Light District in Amsterdam, which is compromised of side streets and alleyways, is located alongside the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal in De Wallen, and sees approximately 2.5 million tourists flock there annually. The area is known for its strip shows, sex shops, peep shows, sex museums, and prostitution.
Sex workers rent cabins in the district, and often stand in a doorway or behind a pane of glass, illuminated by a red back light. Transgender women illuminate their cabins with blue lights.
There is estimated to be around 300 cabins in the district.
Before 2013, it was legal for teenagers eighteen and over to work as prostitutes, this was eventually increased to twenty one.
Although the Netherlands has a liberal view of the legal prostitution it practices, research and reports show that there are human trafficking violations.
According to the European Centre for Law and Justice:
"The prostitution business has become a fertile soil for human traffickers in the Netherlands. It is estimated that the number of human trafficking victims is around 6,250, with approximately 1,300 of those victims being underage Dutch girls. The majority of these victims are used for forced prostitution and sexual exploitation."
A common way teenagers and young women are exploited and lured into prostitution is through "loverboys," a form of pimp who seduces teenagers and young adults, making them fall in love with them, before luring them unwillingly into the sex trade with threats of violence and blackmail. Social media has made the job of loverboys easier in modern times.
In 2019, the BBC published an article titled: Tough times for Amsterdam sex business, wherein a bookshop owner whose business is located inside the Red Light District shares his daily experience of the treatment towards sex workers from tourists.
"There's nowhere for them (the sex workers) to run to. If they want to make a living, they have to stand in the window but there are many, many men coming. From England, Scotland, Ireland. Drunk, screaming, trying to make pictures."
One sex worker named Kristina states in the article that she doesn't like working in the industry but has to. She explains that a friend from her home country in Hungry was the one who encouraged her to travel to Amsterdam and start working in the Red Light District for the money. She explained that she had children back in Hungary who were being raised by their grandmother while she worked to save for better futures for them. Her family were not aware that she was a sex worker.
The statistics on women in the sex industry are unclear. Human in Action states:
“There are approximately 20,000 prostitutes working the streets of the Netherlands (Janssen; Hovener, 2010). Of those, 40% are active in Amsterdam with 5% working the 370 windows or in sex clubs in and around the red light district.”
In 2017, a report from the national reporter on trafficking in human beings and sexual violence stated that over 6,000 people in the Netherlands fell victim to human trafficking each year, with two thirds of those victims forced into the sex trade. The demographic most effected was Dutch girls, over 1,300 each year. The report stated that almost half of the cases were based in the Netherlands and involved coercion, around 21% involved over the border trafficking into the sex industry.
According to many sex workers who have been interviewed by various media outlets over the years, although some women come to work voluntarily due to not being able to find a job or support themselves in their home countries, many women are lured into the industry by gangs, and have their passports withheld while they are forced to work.
Many sex workers in De Wallen have faced violence.
Some tips have been called in since Betty’s hologram has appeared in the window, but there have been no arrests or persons of interest so far.
Anyone with information is urged to contact the Special Witnesses Team on 088-661 77 34. Anyone calling will remain anonymous and will not be on file.
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