In the bowels of the Spalumi digital forum to rate encounters with prostitutes, a thread about Tatiara has been active since January 2018.
In it, more than twenty users praised her beauty, her youth and, also, the size of her breasts.
However, the majority despised, with sordid comments, that the services she offered did not meet the expectations generated.
“The most remarkable thing is her attitude: she seems that she is gone, as if she is a little high.
It's like being with a doll, and eye that is not border or rude, but she looks like a robot and that's not worth it, ”wrote Xavi76, on February 8, 2022. The following comment, signed by another forum member, closes the thread tragically:
“Hello everyone, this message is a bit different than usual in this forum.
Behind these girls who dedicate themselves to this noble profession, there are always people, with their feelings and problems.
Tatiara (real name) died by suicide on February 16 in Madrid.
The family wants to move her body to Brazil to hold the wake there, but they have no money and have opened a fundraiser.
Those of us who knew her or not, or fellow professional girls who want to join, will be very helpful.
That these forums can provide more than information.
Thank you!".
No one responded to that shy obituary, only 13 forum members gave a "thank you" to the notice that this user left in Spalumi.
A week earlier, Tatiara wrote other words in two farewell notes that the police found in a room she had rented in an apartment in the Madrid neighborhood of Las Tablas: “I am tired of life, people disappoint a lot, they are liars and do things bad".
The Internet user who wrote on the forum about Tatiara's death, who prefers to remain anonymous, met her through Instagram.
They had common acquaintances "from the world of prostitution."
The forero and Tatiara never met to have sexual relations.
“I saw that it was wrong in her
stories
of her, I tried to cheer her up and we agreed to have a coffee one day.
But it never happened.
Sometimes I think that he could have helped her more,” this forum member tells EL PAÍS who admits to being, as he calls it, “a consumer of these services”;
also that he posts reviews on Spalumi.
“I only do it if it's a positive review.
But not everyone is like that.
There are clients who believe that by paying they can do whatever they want.
It is despicable that they write it down too,” he argues.
In Spain, paying for sex is not illegal.
Yet.
Because Congress is studying penalizing it, through a PSOE law proposal, and the municipalities can already do so through their municipal ordinances.
Very few consistories currently collect it, and the jump to the internet that occurred years ago is one more obstacle to ending a market, sustained by the trafficking and sexual exploitation of women, which last year moved more than 4,000 million people in Spain. euros and more than 108,000 annually in the world, according to the United Nations Organization.
Money that is distributed between pimps and mafias, mainly, and all those businesses that have been created around it and that are a basic pillar for the maintenance of prostitution in Spain.
Like these websites, which in most cases serve as intermediaries between the punters and the pimps.
Tatiara's ads, photos and comments are still uploaded and can be seen on some of those sites (Spalumi and Sexomercadobarcelona, among others), which enjoy a large audience.
Spalumi alone, owned by Imulaps CB, has 489,240 registered members, not counting users who enter it without an account.
Normally, there are between 10,000 and 11,000 people online at the same time within the forum, 90% visitors.
That is, people who are not registered.
The platform is classified by autonomous communities and, in turn, subdivided by categories: if the girl works in an agency —in a dating floor run by a pimp— or is independent —who works, in theory, on her own.
Users often use templates to assess general aspects of the meeting, as if they were consumer goods —if the girl smokes, hygiene, the location of the flat, if there is a doorman, if it is easy to park, the price...— and to score, from 0 to 10, the services and bodily aspects of the girl: her face, her breasts, her ass, how she practices anal and oral sex, the latter clarifying whether it is with or without a condom.
There is also a general assessment of the punter on whether he would "repeat" in the future.
Then there is an account of the encounter.
The demand of the users with "relaxation professionals" —that is how they are named— is very high and the criticism, as happened to Tatiara, is very harsh if the shopkeepers are not satisfied.
“She goes diva, she wants you to finish very quickly.
She's great, but it's like fucking an inflatable doll that moans" or "sometimes she's a bit of a chatterbox... I just wanted to cum fast and make her go away, I was tired of listening to her", are examples of negative messages from users about other girls.
They cannot respond to comments because the rules of these websites prohibit it, only their clients can write.
live in fear
Friends who knew Tatiara believe that prostitution was the fuel that fueled a depression that had been rooted in her for years and was caused not only by "her job."
By reconstructing her story, through the accounts of some of her acquaintances, her stories on social networks and some of the audio messages she sent to her friends, a life of chiaroscuro is drawn: men who threatened her with death and others. with whom he established a deep friendship, periods of earning a large amount of money and others full of small debts.
Tatiara was born in September 1993 in Salvador de Bahía, a coastal city in eastern Brazil.
She grew up in a broken family and, his acquaintances say, without receiving love or affection from his parents.
When she was between 16 and 17 years old, she moved to Brasilia to live with a sister and began to prostitute herself under the tutelage of another older
escort
.
There she met W., a client with whom she forged a friendship.
“After three or four dates we were already friends and never had a professional relationship.
He frequented my house and knew my children.
I think I was one of the few friends of hers.
Her whole life was very hard.
She hated the job.
She only did it because she needed money to live”, argues W.
Contributing to this discomfort, adds this acquaintance, the bad reviews that other men already left him in the Brazilian forums: “She is too discouraged.
I think she needs to rethink if she should be doing this”, the user Jupirula wrote on one of those websites, on April 22, 2015, in Sao Paulo.
Tatiara was then 21 years old.
She “she was very upset by the negative comments about her work.
In Brasilia she had no social life, it was just work all day in her apartment.
She wanted to change, but she didn't know where to start or where to go.
She had no professional experience, she couldn't get opportunities,” relates W.
Tatiara took a plane to Madrid.
He assumed that in Spain he would earn more money.
Shortly after arriving, in December 2017, she met Juan (fictitious name) thanks to a Brazilian colleague.
Ella Tatiara needed to send money to Brazil and he helped her make the transfer to pay off a loan she had acquired there.
"I owe thousands of euros," explained Tatiara herself in an audio note to a friend she met in Spain.
His acquaintances say that he only owed money that he requested from a bank to build a house in Brazil and small amounts to people close to him, but that "he never had problems with the trafficking mafias."
After several weeks of contact, Juan and Tatiara forged a very strong bond, as he relates: “He was like a father to her.
Tatiara told me a lot.
I took her in my house for two years and agreed to get married so that she could get the papers and have a better life in Spain.
She was a person without evil, innocent.”
Eight months have passed since Tatiara died and Juan still has tears in his eyes when he talks about her.
Tatiara, sitting in Madrid's Retiro Park during the winter of 2019.
Juan witnessed how the comments on the forums continued to hurt him in Spain.
“He showed them to me and told me that it hurt a lot when he read them.
She didn't understand why they treated her so badly,” he says.
They lived together, but Tatiara went to other dating flats to work or moved to the hotels where the punters stayed.
“She asked me to take her by car and wait for her, she was afraid.
On two occasions, the client refused to pay him.
One said that she hadn't come and that she either left or he beat her up.
She was in a world where I am sure there are educated men, but also where the greatest filth of humanity is found, ”says Juan.
The bad reviews on the platforms led users not to contact Tatiara and, consequently, she had no income.
That led her to repeatedly change her identity on the forums.
And also to change the city (Bilbao, Barcelona, A Coruña, Seville).
But many Internet users noticed this and reproached him: "Lara's thing is impossible, she changes her whore name continuously and, what's worse, also her phone number."
“I was trying to help her because her dream was to work in a clothing store.
I paid her several English academies so that she would have more possibilities when it came to finding a job”, says Juan.
But mental health issues were also a barrier.
Both in Brazil and in Spain, Tatiara received psychological and psychiatric help.
In Brasilia she attempted suicide once and in Madrid three times.
Two of them while she lived with Juan.
“I feel like I have failed.
I wanted to help her, but I couldn't”, laments Juan, moved.
In Spain there are specialized organizations such as Apramp (Association for the Prevention, Reintegration and Attention to Prostituted Women) that are dedicated to helping women victims of pimping, both to get out of the exploitation to which they are subjected and to reintegrate socially.
Tatiara never went to them.
“I never looked at that coat the same way again”
Tatiara also had a hard time making friends.
Witness to this difficulty is Susana (fictitious name).
They met through Bubble, an application to meet people, in March 2021. It took a couple of weeks of online conversation to make an appointment.
She still remembers the first time she saw her at the Neptune fountain Starbucks in Madrid.
Tatiara was wearing an orange coat that made her stand out from the crowd, one of her favorite pieces of clothing.
"It was part of her personality," recalls Susana.
Both connected immediately: they were shy, neither liked disco parties and both tried to make a living in Madrid.
Susana blurted out a common question: “What do you do for a living?”
—I don't have a job, but sometimes, to earn extra money, I do massages, Tatiara said.
-Ah well!
My mother is an
esthéticienne
, answered Susana.
"No, but not that kind of massage."
I massage men.
But I don't do anything else and they don't do anything to me either! Tatiara added.
Susana didn't quite understand what he meant, but she didn't keep asking.
She felt Tatiara's eyes shy away from the subject.
The day ended with a photo of both smiling on Gran Vía street and the promise to see each other again.
So it was.
The friendly relationship continued and, little by little, Susana discovered Tatiara's problems.
One day, while she was helping her tidy up her rented room in a dating apartment, Tatiara's phone rang.
She put him on hands-free and a man started asking her about her
escort
services from her.
After hanging up, Tatiara told Susana that she prostituted herself in that room, that she paid a boy to post photos of her and her phone on a website to advertise.
"I could'nt believe it.
When I got home, I grabbed my phone and Googled: 'Brazilian prostitutes'.
An advertisement appeared to me where the photos of her appeared, it was her.
She was wearing her orange coat.
Since then, I haven't seen that coat in the same way again”, narrates Susana.
Pages such as Slumi or Pasion.com allow specific searches by cities or services.
They allow advertising for free, but they set a price for the ad to renew itself periodically in order for the advertiser to gain visibility.
They also have a large audience.
Pasion.com, for example, is in position 45 of the most visited pages in Spain in 2022, according to June data from the Semrush platform.
Way above other relevant websites like Amazon.com.
The socialist proposal in Congress for a law against pimping has among its objectives to penalize not only the whoremongers but all those activities that seek to profit from the prostitution of others, which is why many of these forums have begun to delete these contents or to reformulate the strategy of announcing these young women.
A person looks at a page of the Spalumi forum where the services of prostitutes in provinces throughout Spain are rated. Jaime Villanueva
For a while, Tatiara stopped writing to Susana on WhatsApp.
One day she decided to call her on the phone.
Tatiara answered with a small voice to tell her that she was fine, but she was admitted to a hospital because she had tried to commit suicide in a room that she had rented on Orense street in Madrid, where she also worked.
On her return, the girls she shared the flat with, also prostitutes, changed the lock and kicked her out.
They argued that what had happened had put them in the crosshairs of the community of neighbors, who already suspected that theirs was a dating apartment.
“The president of the community catches you and I don't know what he would do to you.
Look, it's best that you don't show up there.
Give me an address and your things will be sent to you by Uber.
It will be the best for everyone."
Behind these "independent" women are also the pimps, who are either in charge of subletting rooms in these flats at extortionate prices or even charging for managing the
escorts
' ads on the different pages.
"This was the type of debt that Tatiara had, the rent of those apartments, advertising or small debts for traveling to other places to continue working," says Susana.
The messages between them continued and stayed some more.
Susana remembers that one day before winter they met at the bowling alley.
“It was a nice memory.
She was happy,” she comments.
It was not the last.
Tatiara returned to Juan's house at the end of 2021, and Susana visited her.
That night they slept together, but Tatiara, says Susana, warned her: “Tomorrow morning I'll meet a client here.
You will have to leave at 8.00″.
The next day, before leaving through the apartment door, Susana turned and looked at Tatiara in the bathroom.
While she was getting dressed, Tatiara stared into the mirror to put on her makeup.
“I was very sorry.
I closed the door quietly and left.
During her stay in Spain, Tatiara tried to leave the world of prostitution and work in other jobs.
She never passed the trial period.
"Is there someone who works in a bar that could help me a little bit to teach me how to carry trays, that I don't know?" she said in a video that she posted on Instagram.
For her friends, the last time she was fired from her, when she worked in a clothing store, “it was the last straw” in her mental health.
“After that, she thought that she was doomed to live like this forever,” says W. Tatiara, she left —as she had done other times— Juan's house and went to Las Tablas.
Within a few weeks, she committed suicide.
Her family finally managed to raise the money to take her back to Brazil and Tatiara's body now rests in her hometown.
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