World Cup games put new light on sex trade

"How the games go has nothing to do with me," she said, sitting in the bedroom where she does her work. "But I'll be ready to make money during the halftime breaks."

Luna, who uses only one name professionally, is one of an estimated 400,000 female sex workers in a country that legalized prostitution in 2002.

But that won't be enough to fulfill the demands of the millions of fans who'll flock to Germany during the tournament, experts think.

Another 40,000 prostitutes are expected to come from outside Germany during the monthlong tournament, at least some of whom, advocates worry, will have been forced into the sex trade.

Some reconsidering

Stopping human trafficking was one of the reasons that Germany legalized prostitution. The logic was that legitimizing the trade would make it safer and healthier.

But a United Nations report on human trafficking released last month still rated Germany "very high" as a destination for women forced into sex work.

"I was with my party, the Greens, when we pushed for legalization," said Hiltrud Breyer, a German member of the European Parliament. "We really believed it would bring the profession out of the shadows and improve lives. I'm rethinking that position."

In Germany, as in the rest of the world, prostitution is big business, with annual revenues estimated at 14.5 billion euros, or $18 billion.

Few joined union

Under German law, prostitutes must be at least 18 years old, but registration isn't mandatory and the official government service-workers union, which represents them, says only a few have signed up.

But union benefits may be outweighed by costs such as paying taxes on their earnings, one possible reason the number of registered prostitutes is so low.

And because prostitution is legal, police don't investigate it as aggressively as they once did, and that's allowed forced prostitution to thrive, Breyer said.

Anne Fitzgerald, who works with Solidarity With Women in Distress, agrees.

That's why her group began preparing an information campaign last year.

The group flooded Eastern Europe and the Middle East with fliers warning young women against "accepting lucrative job offers in Germany," saying such jobs "may turn out to be jobs in brothels."