In Denmark, au pairs risk abuse in name of ‘cultural exchange’

COPENHAGEN: Dressed in a red-and-black lumberjack shirt, jeans and sneakers, she looked more like 16 than her actual age of 19. The petite au pair wrung her hands as the policeman took her statement.

"He didn’t rape me, but he kept saying he wanted to have physical relations with me and wanted to kiss me," she said.

"That’s still wrong, isn’t it?" "Of course it is," the policeman said.

The young Nepalese woman had come to Denmark to live with a host family as an au pair through a scheme billed as a cultural exchange programme.

Common in Europe, such programmes allow young people, usually women, to immerse themselves in an overseas culture while helping with child care in exchange for food, accommodation and a modest allowance. In Denmark, rights groups say inadequate protections leave au pairs vulnerable to labour exploitation and sexual harassment.

For the woman in the red flannel shirt, who declined to be identified, problems had started right from the beginning.

When her host father met her at the airport, he held her hand, telling her "this is how Europeans are".

When he sent her text messages asking to visit her room late at night, she wanted a way out.

Another au pair told her she could leave her host family and look for another, but she worried about not finding one immediately since it would mean having to fly back to Nepal, penniless and with debts.

She had paid a broker there $6,000 to find her host family.

"He created a Skype account and pretended he was me. He arranged everything.

The Nepalese au pairs I’ve talked to here all paid between $4,000 and $6,000 to their brokers.

"With the help of the Au Pair Network, a consortium of labour and religious support groups funded by the Danish government, she found the courage to go to the police, who are now investigating.

"Au pair" is French for "on equal terms".

The earliest programmes in Europe date back to the years right after World War Two when it was one of the few ways young women could travel abroad and earn cash. In 1969, the Council of Europe adopted protocols to standardise conditions governing the placement of au pairs.