Cockroaches and Coercion: The Exploitation of Women in Colombia’s Webcam Industry

Carla* was 19 years old when she started a new job at an adult webcam studio in the Colombian city of Cucuta in 2023, performing sex shows for clients worldwide. It wasn’t her first experience of webcamming, as she had briefly worked at another studio for a few weeks just before finding what she thought was a better opportunity. However, she soon realized that the atmosphere at this new studio was different.

“They wanted me to stream with five or six men. I kept saying ‘no, no, no’,” Carla, who is now 21, told More to Her Story. “They basically threatened to fine me if I didn’t do it.”

Colombia is one of the biggest hubs in the multibillion dollar sex industry, along with countries like Romania and the Philippines. Many models, like Carla, say it offers them a way to be financially secure. But it also carries a high risk of exploitation.

A new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report highlights the types of abuses models experience: pressure from studio management to perform sex acts they don’t want to do, infestations of cockroaches and bedbugs in webcam rooms, and fines from studio owners for going to the bathroom.

Advocates say studios are largely to blame for these conditions, but HRW found that there are also issues in the supply chain: multinational companies — such as those based in the U.S. and EU — are not doing enough to protect these women against labor abuses and sexual exploitation.

The HRW report looked at four U.S. and EU based platforms — BongaCams, LiveJasmin, Chaturbate and Stripchat — and concluded that they have failed to develop due diligence protocols related to occupational health, safety, sanitation, and working conditions for the studios with which they work. LiveJasmin is based in Luxembourg, while BongaCams and Stripchat are in Cyprus. Chaturbate is based in the U.S.

Webcam models like Carla connect with clients worldwide by setting up accounts on online platforms that enable them to livestream their content. Clients buy tokens to tip the models or pay for private shows, and the performers earn a percentage of the total value of these tokens. The remaining share goes to the platform.

While some models in Colombia choose to work independently at home, others choose to work in studios due to the greater internet stability, technical support, and privacy they provide. The studio usually manages the account of these models, taking a portion of their earnings before paying the model a share.

In Colombian studios, shifts usually vary from six to 10 hours or more. On average, models get one break between 15 and 30 minutes, but some don’t get one at all due to studio policies

“I would hide snacks behind the desk and camera because [I would be working] 10 hours without a break for food, and we’d get so hungry,” a 25-year-old Venezuelan woman working in Medellín, Colombia, told HRW. Another woman reported that she would have to pee into a water bottle, because taking a bathroom break would mean minutes docked from her 20-minute break during a shift. 

HRW found that none of the four companies employing webcam models — BongaCams, LiveJasmin, Chaturbate, and Stripchat — seem to have policies or protocols that protect the right of models to take adequate breaks. In fact, three platforms had strict policies on how much time models can be away from the screen, ranging from zero tolerance for time away to 15 minutes if a model puts up an away message first. Chaturbate didn’t have their protocols publicly available but told HRW they allowed a 30-minute break during shifts.

“The webcam industry is held to a bafflingly low standard when it comes to supply chain due diligence,” said Erin Kilbride, who authored the HRW report. 

The report also found a lack of policies for studios relating to occupational health and safety. Several workers reported to HRW that some webcam rooms frequently had cockroach infestations, bedbugs, piles of garbage, leftover food, and used menstrual products. The inability to take bathroom breaks meant that female staff had to change their menstrual products in the room where they worked, where trash was often not removed for days.

Working in studios can also expose models to wage theft and delayed payments by studio management. HRW found that studios often fail to inform models of the amounts earned on platforms, instead withdrawing the earnings themselves and delaying payment to the models. The report estimates that platforms keep about 50 to 65 percent of the money that a webcam model generates from a user. Of the remaining amount, studios tend to keep on average around half. But many models say their overall take-home pay was not made transparent to them. Thirty-six of the 50 models interviewed by HRW were unaware of what percentage of their earnings was paid out by the platforms. 

No platform provided HRW with a specific protocol on how they ensure that studios are provided with detailed information about how the payouts are calculated, meaning models are vulnerable to wage theft by studios. Some models are also unsure about when they will receive payment.

“The payment was very varied. Sometimes they paid weekly, sometimes biweekly, sometimes monthly,” Vanessa, 29, told More to Her Story. “They simply hired people like they see them as sex machines, where we have to perform, perform, perform. My body was exhausted.”

In Colombia, working in adult content is legal as long as the model is at least 18 years old and has not been forced into the work. But more than three-quarters of the 50 models interviewed for the HRW investigation reported that although they had voluntarily chosen webcam work, studio management had threatened or manipulated them into engaging in certain sex acts on the platforms they weren’t comfortable performing. 

One woman said she was made to insert a glass bottle into her vagina and was scared it would break. Another was asked to partake in crude acts involving defecation and urination due to the fact that the studio had misrepresented her services on her online profile. 

On top of issuing fines to webcam models for refusing client requests, some studios would lie to models by saying the online platforms would reduce traffic to their pages, impact their earnings, or deactivate their account if they did not comply.

Of the 50 models HRW interviewed, 49 said they had not seen nor signed terms from any platform on which they streamed. Because it is often studio management who set up and control the models’ accounts, and not the models themselves, models are often unaware of the particular conditions of using the site. For example, many of these sights prohibit the showing of bodily fluids, and yet some models HRW spoke with discussed the regular presence of bodily fluids, laying bare the lack of informed consent between the studios and the webcam models they employ.

The adult sex industry has boomed across the globe in recent years. In Europe, after Germany legalized buying and selling sex in 2002, the country’s prostitution industry was valued at €6 billion — on par with major corporations like Porsche or Adidas at the time. Today, it has grown to an estimated €15 billion.

Though webcamming can exist without exploitation, there is still a broad pattern of abuse within the global sex industry. In Latin America, the problem is particularly widespread: according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in 2018, nearly 80% of detected trafficking victims in Central America and the Caribbean were girls and women, while in South America, women made up 70% of victims. In Mexico, authorities have launched close to 5,000 investigations into the sexual trafficking of women since 2015.

Moreover, all platforms — including the four major platforms headquartered in the EU and U.S. reported by HRW — have policies concerning child sexual exploitation, as well as age-verification procedures. But studios are able to circumvent this by hiring minors using fake IDs and by “recycling” accounts that were formerly used by models that no longer work with the studio.

The models that HRW interviewed were adults, but several told HRW they began working in studios when they were between the ages of 13 and 17. Some underage models also find fake IDs on their own, or use the IDs of older friends to get work in studios and register on platforms.

“It’s very easy. [I did this] for three years, and I passed as if I were this girl, but I wasn't her of course,” said Mariangela, who was just 15 when she started working in studios.

Shortly before turning 18, Mariangela confessed to being underage to the boss of one studio. But she told HRW he was indifferent. “At first, he didn’t believe me,” she said. “Then he just laughed.” She continued working there as normal.

“Platforms have the power and responsibility to address abuses by studios. They need to review and implement the comprehensive standards of the studios with which they work,” the HRW report author Kilbride, said.

Catherine Ellis

Catherine Ellis is a multimedia freelance journalist based between Colombia and the UK.

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