The path to sex slavery

By CNN European Political Editor Robin Oakley

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The pattern of sex slavery is becoming well established, according to those who help rescue women lured into the sex trade.

Girls in poor countries like Moldova or Romania see local ads for waitresses, nannies or housekeepers in Western Europe at wages way above local incomes and are recruited in their home country.

They meet up with their contacts who take them across borders, often via Serbia, and they are then literally bought and sold by brothel owners in places like Arizona Market near Brcko.

They are then virtually kept as prisoners in bars and brothels and forced to work as prostitutes.

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Lynellyn Long, who works with the International Organization for Migration, told CNN: “The girls are completely frightened and they’re told they have to pay back their recruiter and trafficker for being transported and taken across boundaries.

"They also have their passports or identity documents taken off them and may even have their clothes taken away.

“They are told they have to pay off the debt bondage and they have to do what the bar owner says, or, they may be beaten or brutalised or killed “

It is not just a sex trade but a slave trade and it is sometimes very difficult to help the girls escape their bondage. Many are too ashamed to seek to try to go home.

In some areas of countries like Bosnia authorities turn a blind eye, being given free use of the girls’ services as a bribe.

When the police, under prompting from the United Nations and other authorities, do carry out raids on the bars and brothels where the girls are kept few prosecutions follow.

Sometimes the women themselves are even more frightened of the authorities than they are of the brothel-keepers, with some forming the kind of attachment kidnap victims sometimes do with their captors.

They are reluctant to give evidence against the bar owners, some of whom will openly admit that they have bought and sold girls.

David Lamb, regional chief human rights officer for the International Police Task Force in Tuzla, told a CNN investigation: “Even in cases where trafficked women are identified we still see a relatively ineffective approach by the entire criminal justice system to arrest and prosecute traffickers and club owners who are keeping women.

"We have had some successful cases, but we have a lot further to go.”