"I was sold for 2,000 euros"

[MaggieH]

"'I was sold for 2,000 euros'

http:// news.bbc .co.uk/1/hi/uk/7026018.stm

Wednesday, 3 October 2007, 15:55 GMT 16:55 UK

Anna is one of an estimated 4,000 women thought to have been trafficked into the UK into a life of prostitution.

Here, she describes how she was forced to have sex and faced ice-cold baths, starvation and beatings if she did not do as she was told.

When Anna was just 12, she ran away from her home in Albania after befriending an older man.

He obtained forged papers for her and took her to Hamburg in Germany where he coerced her into prostitution.

After four years selling herself for sex, she was hidden in a lorry and trafficked into the UK where she was sold on for 2,000 Euros and employed in a brothel.

"In the beginning I was busy. I was younger and slimmer, and I was a new face," she says.

She was getting between 15 and 20 customers a day and at Christmas that could be as many as 30.

She found herself under increasing pressure to take drugs.

She tells of a time early on in her abuse when she was with one customer who had asked for two girls.

The other girl was showing her what to do but Anna started to cry when she saw the customer lying on the bed - it was the first time she had seen a naked man.

"The girl said to me to go downstairs and I went downstairs. I was crying and shouting and he [a pimp] started hitting me saying 'don't cry because you put us in trouble - why are you crying in front of a customer?'"

Icy baths

Punishments were harsh and Anna was desperate to leave but too afraid to make a move.

"As soon as the bell rings I have to be ready. If they see you without make-up -'oh my god'. You are going to get hit if you don't look nice."

If she didn't make money, she would be put in a bath of ice-cold water and hit, she says.

"You are not allowed to eat if you don't make money and all the time they follow you.

"Sometimes you think you will kill yourself or try to run away. If they catch you, it's the worst thing."

Scarred by iron

Eventually Anna was rescued during a police raid on the brothel.

By that stage, she was covered in scars and bruises, and permanently felt sick.

"I have got a scar, I was burned with an iron on my leg and I was beaten."

From there, she was sent to Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre before being taken in by the Poppy Project which looks after trafficked women and children who have been forced into prostitution.

She told the BBC she was recently refused the right to stay in the UK and is currently fighting attempts to send her back to Albania.

Now aged 20, she does not want to return to her home country for fear of being found and forced back into prostitution.

However, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said she could not give any guarantees that victims would not be deported after being rescued." ...

"If they see you without make-up -'oh my god' - you are going to get hit if you don't look nice."
-- Anna.

[bluecoat28]

I don't understand how people can be pro-prostitution when this shit happens.