ITN reporter buys sex slave

[delphyne]

"The shocking truth about the vice trade: Girls of 14 working as sex slaves
By CHRIS ROGERS - More by this author »
Last updated at 18:07pm on 25th January 2008

This is the story of Monica; she is fourteen. These hidden camera images show her being sold to a London prostitute ring by her Romanian pimps. She is 14. Chris Rogers spent seven months charting how the girls' journey begin

The taxi driver drops us outside a petrol station on a busy road. I start swigging whisky and smoking, trying to look the part. Anything to avoid suspicion. I'm in Iasi, northeast Romania, filming undercover for an ITV News At Ten investigation. Tonight I'm planning to do business with the gangs that sell and traffic young women. I am going to buy a sex slave. I approach two hard-looking women in their late thirties on the petrol station forecourt. They are wrapped in fur coats to survive on the freezing streets. They don't seem surprised to see a foreigner here. They beckon me towards them, out of sight of the CCTV cameras. Police cars drive past – it must be obvious what's going on, but I've been told officers simply turn a blind eye.

It is so poor here that the trade in humans is commonplace. Young girls are prostituted on the streets until they are conditioned enough to be sold on. As I was to find out, girls are often sold or leased from gang to gang and country to country.

The women are pimping a young girl called Monica. I ask if she is for sale. "Yes," one of the women tells me. "You can take her for one hour, a night or a week, it's up to you." Monica's little face pokes between the two of them. She is pretty but looks worn. Her hair is greasy and tangled, her skin dirty and bruised. "I want to take a girl to Britain for good, to work there, so you are no good to me," I say.

One of the women smiles and looks down at Monica as though she is trying to work out how much she is worth.

"OK, you can take her but I must check with someone first."

She makes a call on her mobile. A few minutes later a black BMW with tinted windows pulls on to the forecourt. Both women begin to talk to the driver inside. He is Monica's "owner", the internal trafficker who has imprisoned her for sex with countless men every day. As the trafficker and his pimps watch me I demand that Monica twirls around so I can check her body. She does so without hesitation.

"OK, how much do you pay for her?" demands one woman.

I have no idea how to put a price on a human so I ask them to suggest a figure, adding, "She must have ID papers." The documents are essential for any trafficker wanting to take a girl abroad but can be easily forged. Monica's trafficker asks for €800 (£500). I agree on the money but they want me to come back in two days to collect Monica's ID papers.

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" I ask. The pimps laugh nervously.

"No, take her now; she is your guarantee," one of them says.

"Come back in two days. We will have her papers but you must pay more for them."

Only a real British trafficker would be desperate for Monica's ID to get her across EU borders including Britain's, so I agree to take Monica now and then come back. Their eyes almost pop out as we count out the €800. But I don't trust them, so as the money is handed over our team put Monica inside the taxi. We pile in and speed off.

Despite my good intentions for Monica I still feel as if I have committed a crime. But kidnap or handing money to local traffickers are the only ways to guarantee a successful rescue of a girl. Monica is relaxed. This is normal to her. As far as she is concerned she has been sold to a gang to work in Britain. It's probably not the first time she has been given new owners. She strokes my face and smiles to show her submission. She tells me she is 16 years old but she looks much younger, and I later learn that she is only 14. I am desperate to tell her the truth but we have to be far from the city before we do that.

We pull into a car park, pay the taxi driver a good tip and escort Monica into our own van. Everyone keeps an eager eye on her. She may try to escape to make more money for her Romanian traffickers. The girls are usually warned to come back or be found and punished. After a few hours into what was to be a 12-hour journey, Monica becomes nervous She persistently offers me sex, perhaps because her former owner expected it, so my interpreter tells her the truth, that we are taking her to a charity-run safe house that looks after victims of sex trafficking. Monica screams, crying hysterically and hits out at me. Then like a wounded child she curls up into a ball and sobs, shaking with shock.

As we get closer to the safe house that we hope she will make her home, she cuddles into me. Still sobbing, she says her parents sold her to the traffickers when she was nine.

"I was then sold on to another gang and taken to Bucharest. I didn't know where I was heading but I didn't like them so I ran away."

She lights a cigarette with her shaking hands.

"I got to a government safe house for street kids and prostitutes but the boys there abused me so I ran off."

Monica was also beaten by the police who picked her up.

"Eventually I got back to the people you found me with. I went back to what I know best," she sobs.

I will never know if Monica's embrace is from fear or gratitude. It is hardly surprising she is reluctant to trust what this new day offers her. The Reaching Out safe house is in a secret location to protect the staff and girls who live there from the traffickers they have escaped. The project is run by a woman called Iana Matei.

"Monica can experience something here she has never known," says Matei.

"Trust, love and understanding."

But she adds that it's a long and fragile process.

"Monica may go back to her traffickers and we have to accept that," she says.

"She has that choice. We don't want her to but she fears them and at the same time they are all she knows.

"Why should she trust me or you when everyone who offered her help before, including the government safe house and the police, have let her down?"

Monica could have been sold to real traffickers and joined an estimated 25,000 others, according to the British Government, who have come from Eastern Europe and ended up in British brothels. Few try to escape. They are not imprisoned with chains and cages but by fear and exploitation.
Their cries for help are muted by sheer terror or are beaten out of them. Some are forced into drug dependency – a habit they then have to work for to finance. Up to 75 per cent of known brothels across the UK offer Eastern European girls. Supply has to meet demand, and one in ten British men admits to using prostitutes.

There are dozens of British sex-resource websites filled with thousands of pages containing photos and details of prostitutes offering their services. There is often an online system for users to book appointments or a direct telephone number for them to call.

Before leaving for Romania, we had placed a fake advert on one website for a brothel called EUrotica, which bore all the hallmarks of using trafficked sex slaves – young Eastern Europeans, offering unprotected sex at cheap rates. No girl would be willing to do this if they had a choice.
Within two hours we had received 400 bookings – enough to generate £40,000 of takings. Some men asked if we offered girls much younger than 18. In just a week of advertising on the website, EUrotica received more than 1,000 emails and phone calls.

Where do the girls come from? Since joining the European Union, Romania has become one of the main destinations for gangs looking for girls to buy. Such demand is a dream for people like Stephan. He has just served a typically short sentence in a Bucharest jail for trafficking. He didn't just cater for the local Romanian elite but more recently sold girls to foreign gangs supplying the demand of British brothels.

"Foreign currency gives you credibility," he tells me.

"Now everyone is learning English so we can do business with foreign traffickers.

But you have to keep finding new girls to replace the ones you've sold."

He drives me around the Bucharest streets where he often targets his victims.

"You have to get to know a girl before you take her so you know her history, her financial situation and if her family will come looking for her," he explains.

"This is very important. At first I hang out with a group of teenagers as they arrive looking to make money in the city or even go to a nightclub a few times and become friends.

You offer them a way to make money, but if they don't want to do prostitution then it gets more complicated."

Without any emotion, Stephan goes on to explain the process he calls "complicated".

"You keep her isolated in a house," he says.

"You invite friends over and you tell them, “Hey, I've got a beautiful girl and she's available for sex but she won't want to have sex with you.” Then these guys come over to the house because they want to get laid.

"Eventually she will give in."

In the past 12 months, hundreds of young children and teenagers have disappeared across Romania without trace. The Romanian Center for Missing and Exploited Children, run by Gabriela Coman, was set up last year in response to the problem, but has yet to get the full co-operation of the police.

"Some children are snatched but the police also have to realise that runaways are vulnerable to trafficking too," says Coman, her desk piled up with missing persons files.

"We have just a few days to find them or it will be too late. The borders are relaxed now – it's easy for traffickers to pick kids up and get them away.""

http://www. dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/live/live.html?in_article_id=510380&in_page_id=1889

[delphyne]

Enslaved by sexy indeed.

[bluecoat28]

"You invite friends over and you tell them, “Hey, I've got a beautiful girl and she's available for sex but she won't want to have sex with you.” Then these guys come over to the house because they want to get laid.

"Eventually she will give in."

sigh