Two young women, each carrying a large case, climb a flight of steps to a townhouse in the Academy Court gated residential complex in Kildare town.
It is the winter of 2018, and this could be any housing complex in the country. But this property is different; its residents are different from those of the properties around it.
The three-bed redbrick townhouse will be used for four months as a brothel where these women, both foreign nationals with no English, will work as prostitutes. The house is not a single brothel operating on its own, but part of a wider network run by a 54-year-old Brazilian man named Ilamar Rodrigues Ribeiro.
Ribeiro set up brothels in pockets of the country – primarily in regional towns – bringing foreign nationals to service clients as prostitutes against their will.
He ran brothels in Longford town and Ballymahon in Co Longford, Ballyconnell in Co Cavan, Enniscorthy in Co Wexford, Roscommon town and Ballaghaderreen in Co Roscommon and Carrick-on-Shannon in Co Leitrim.
In Kildare town, local residents went about their business without knowing what was going on inside the Academy Court house. But there were signs.
One local woman living in another property in the complex, who did not want to be named, recalled the former residents and an unusual scene. “We saw some girls - I met two girls with two big cases,” she says.
The complex, comprising 33 townhouses and apartments, was built more than 20 years ago and is located in the centre of the town, near a primary school. The resident recalled seeing a blue light inside the apartment – “something like on [in] a fridge” – as she went to work early in the morning.
Last month, Ribeiro was sentenced at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to nine years in prison for offences connected to the running of brothels in a number of towns, including at Academy Court and at Riverside apartments in Tullow, Co Carlow.
The Co Carlow brothel was run from an apartment in the 14-unit Riverview housing complex, whose residents were unaware of its presence in the block.
“I’m pretty disgusted that kind of thing was going on in this block. My kids would come down and visit me here,” said Neil McGregor (55), who is originally from Scotland but has been living in Tullow for the last 25 years and the last six in Riverview.
In the wake of Ribeiro’s sentencing, Det Chief Supt Colm Noonan dispelled any notion that brothels were the preserve of city life in Ireland.
“In every town, city, village and part of this country, there are women being sexually exploited today,” the senior Garda officer told reporters.
Sometimes they got some of the money – a portion. But they end up paying most of it away on rent that is extortionate, and then on food and bills
Ribeiro’s offences date back to 2010, but it was not until 2020 that the Garda began to monitor him. He was eventually arrested at Dublin Airport in November 2023.
Ribeiro, who came from Goiás in central Brazil, had previous convictions for fraud in the UK and France. Gardaí believe Ribeiro may have been running brothels in other countries.
Det Supt Derek Maguire of the Garda National Protective Services and Det Gda Vanessa Stafford, who investigated and built the case that led to Ribeiro’s conviction, said the women who worked as prostitutes in the brothels he ran in Ireland were victims who found themselves in an extremely vulnerable situation.
These women were “forced into this against their will – they may have had 10 to 12 clients a day”, says Maguire. “It’s like being raped 10 to 12 times.”
Stafford says the women never agreed to the sexual services they provided. “Someone else has agreed to them for these women. When they were liaising with clients, they were using Google Translate, which is a red flag in itself.”
The brothels were “all about making money for organised crime groups – these groups make money using these women”, says Maguire.
“Sometimes they got some of the money, a portion. But they end up paying most of it away on rent that is extortionate, and then on food and bills. They are left with no financial security or stability,” says Stafford, who added that all the victims left the sex industry following Ribeiro’s arrest.
They are not chained in some room when they are brought into the country; it’s psychological coercion. They are told that they owe a notional debt
The Brazilian had “no status” in Ireland: he travelled in and out of the country on a “false application to study” or on a holiday visa, says Stafford. “He used alias names and passports and identification,” she adds.
Since a 2017 change in legislation, paying for “sexual activity” has become a criminal offence. Despite this, the number of prosecutions relating to prostitution remain low.
Since the legislative change, there has been a greater focus on pursuing prosecutions against those seeking to buy sex rather than the sex workers themselves, which has resulted in an increase in prosecutions for paying-for-sex and a subsequent decrease in soliciting-for-sex offences.
A Department of Justice review found that the Director of Public Prosecutions has directed 161 prosecutions for paying for sex but, as of July 2024, just 15 convictions had been secured.
The department’s review found there have been 342 incidents of paying-for-sex; in contrast, there has been an average of 14 incidents of brothel-keeping each year from 2017 to 2022, with less than five incidents for 2023 and for the period running from the start of 2024 to May 2024, respectively.
Recorded incidents of human trafficking fluctuate, but have remained below 30 each year since 2019, according to the review.
Some in the sex industry are critical of the new paying-for-sex offence.
[ Do Ireland’s laws on sex work need to change?Opens in new window ]
Emma (not her real name), a foreign national who is a sex worker in a brothel, told The Irish Times there is security in working with others in a dedicated property.
“If you’re with someone [another sex worker], it’s more safe. Most of us are mothers supporting our children,” she said.
The people who use a brothel, Emma says, comes from all walks of life, just as one would find going “to the supermarket”.
She believes the paying-for-sex offence has made conditions worse for sex workers.
“If a client is criminalised, he’s not as willing to be screened; you can’t track them, you end up dealing with more dodgy clients, potentially violent clients,” she says. “None of the sex workers wanted this legislation. The law isn’t ending demand.”
In every town, city, village and part of this country, there are women being sexually exploited today
Emma is also critical of the brothel-keeping law, as it does not allow sex workers to work together in an environment that might provide them with greater safety. She says there is a tension between sex workers and gardaí who “put pressure on landlords to evict us”.
Trust is non-existent. “None of the girls I know working in the industry feel comfortable about going to the gardaí,” Emma says.
To improve the material circumstances of sex workers, Emma argues for full decriminalisation. “We need anti-discrimination laws. Also, the root causes of sex work – poverty and the housing crisis – need to be addressed.”
While Ribeiro was not convicted of human trafficking, he was found guilty of “ancillary” offences: organised prostitution, running brothels and laundering the proceeds of crime, says Maguire.
A common question the detective superintendent hears about the victims of trafficking is: “Why don’t they walk away?”
“They are not chained in some room when they are brought into the country; it’s psychological coercion,” he says. “They are told that they owe a notional debt – a fee that they must pay back or terrible things will happen to their family back where they come from.
“It’s psychological abuse that prevents them from walking away.”
He argues against any prospect of decriminalisation of prostitution, in the short term at least. “If we decriminalise sexual services, there are no consequences.”
