Posted on 07/17/2002 12:16:26 PM PDT by DTA
Yorkshire Post
July 17, 2002
B>Revealed: Scandal of the teenage sex slaves
Albanian criminals in Britain are trading girls as sex slaves for the price of a second-hand car.
Keith Dovkants investigates.
The face of modern sex slavery is deceptively
decorous. Behind a darkened doorway visitors are
handed a playing card – the Jack of Hearts – which, in
a quaint and almost courtly ritual, is presented
without comment to the girl of choice. There is
nothing to suggest that the girl is anything but a
willing player in the encounter that follows. But,
again, this may be a deception.
This brothel in Camden Town in north London has made
use of young women caught up in a crime phenomenon
that shames us. It may seem incredible that, in the
great city where Hull's William Wilberforce campaigned
– in the democracy that led the world in outlawing
slavery – human beings are traded now for the price of
a second-hand car.
At its heart are Albanians who have exploited the
tragic misery of their own people to gain sanctuary in
Britain. They have created an entire underworld
regime, financed by the rich pickings of prostitution,
and their vice network is spreading fast.
It began with the Kosovo emergency in 1999 when
thousands of Kosovar Albanians poured into Britain
seeking asylum. Among them were Albanians who
masqueraded as victims to gain entry. Pre-eminent
among them were men from the clans based in the
northern cities of Tropoja and Shkodra – areas of
Albania where banditry has flourished for centuries.
These men formed a nexus of pimps, traffickers and
enforcers.
Principal among them is a former Albanian policeman
who has been granted asylum here and who lives in east
London. His name cannot be revealed for legal reasons
but he is known widely in ethnic Albanian circles as a
wealthy and powerful figure. This man, Bledi – not his
real name – has contacts across Europe reaching into
the ranks of the Mafia groups that control crime in
the former Soviet countries, including Russia.
Through these contacts, Bledi purchases women. They
may come from the impoverished cities of Russia, the
Baltic states, Romania, Moldova or the Balkans. Often,
they have simply been kidnapped. Children's charity
Terre des Hommes says that more than 6,000 minors aged
between 12 and 16 are smuggled out of eastern Europe
to work as prostitutes, drug traffickers and beggars
every year.
Barbara Limanowska, author of a Unicef report on the
trafficking of women and children, says at least 10 to
30 per cent of all eastern European sex workers are
minors. It is thought that up to 80 per cent of
victims from Albania are girls under 18. While a
number of European countries have made considerable
strides in their attempts to tackle the problem, she
said, Britain has been slow to act.
Elena's story is shocking, not least for the way it
ends. She was a pretty 12-year-old schoolgirl in the
south-west Romanian town of Targa Jiu – a dismal
former mining town with a collapsed local economy. Her
mother left home and her father, a chronic alcoholic,
did his best to bring up Elena and her elder brother,
But the father died suddenly, leaving the children
alone.
They were destitute and the boy fell in with criminals
who put him in touch with the Mafia.
Elena doesn't know the details of the deal but she is
convinced her brother sold her to the gangsters. She
was transported across Europe to Croatia and put to
work as a child prostitute in an Adriatic resort.
Then, when she was 15, she was smuggled into Britain
and sold to an Albanian couple living in south-east
London. She believes they paid $8,000 for her – about
£5,000 – and she was immediately put to work.
Elena said: "They made me do four hours at a massage
parlour then the rest of the time I saw men at their
flat. They kept the money and threatened me with a
gun." She tried to run away; they found her, dragged
her back to the flat and beat her up. She finally
managed to escape and alerted the police to her
plight. She was immediately taken into care by social
services, given new clothes and a safe home.
It might have ended there. But what happened next has
probably sealed Elena's fate.
She was found by a young Albanian man who befriended
her. He said he liked her and wanted to rescue her.
For this girl, who had never known love – whose human
contacts had been with men who abused her for money –
this was something for which she had yearned. She ran
away with the young Albanian and is now beyond the
reach of the carers and even the police.
He became her pimp and, according to a source involved
in her case, she is working for him as a prostitute.
A member of the Albanian community, who has witnessed
first-hand the bartering and commercial disposition of
women, provided a stark description of the activities
of Bledi and others. This man is living in a safe
house in fear of his life.
He said: "These men are exceptionally dangerous. They
don't hesitate to resort to violence if they believe
their business or personal liberty is in jeopardy.
Bledi is utterly ruthless. I was present at a
negotiation in which he was trying to sell two Russian
girls for £6,500 each. They had been provided with
Greek passports and were being offered to pimps in
London.
"Bledi and his associates say they smuggle in two
girls every 10 days. They are usually sold for $10,000
each (about £6,000), depending on how attractive and
potentially lucrative they are."
The pimps and brothel owners can recoup anything up to
£1,000 a day from their investment, less what they
give the women. Often, this is very little. While many
of the girls are sold to organised gangs, others are
sold to individuals.
According to the source, there is now a pattern of
pimping on a wide scale in some ethnic Albanian
communities: "If a man can afford to buy one, two or
three girls, why should he work? That is the attitude
among a number of people from the Shkodra and Tropoja
clans. Often they will force their own girlfriends
into prostitution."
The attraction of prostitution, apart from the
financial rewards, is that it carries minimum risk.
The only charge police can bring against a pimp is
that of living off immoral earnings. The maximum
sentence, rarely imposed, is two years imprisonment.
Chief Superintendent Simon Humphrey, head of Scotland
Yard's vice squad, says: "We are creating a market
place where people are being exploited. People are
effectively condoning a sort of slavery."
Police have tried to tackle the menace of the Albanian
gangs, and they have had some success. The brothel in
Camden Town, First Class Sauna and Massage, was the
scene of a rescue in which police became involved. It
concerned a 15-year-old girl whose working name was
Lisa. She had been abused by her father at home in
Romania. When she tried to escape she was sold to a
gangster, who took her to Macedonia.
She was sold again to an Albanian who passed her to
pimps in Italy. At 15 she had endured an entire
childhood of brutality and abuse, then a young
Albanian man befriended her. He told her she should
run away with him and he arranged for her to travel to
Britain on false documents. Lisa learned later that
this man, whom she took to be her saviour, had paid
4,000 Deutschmarks (about £1,300) for her.
He raped her and forced her to work in brothels. She
worked until 7am, slept for a few hours, and was then
driven on another circuit of the sauna and massage
parlours. She charged £30 for oral sex and £50 for
more extensive activities. She handed all the money to
the pimp, who lived a life of considerable luxury.
Lisa's misery was boundless but – even in this grim
trade, it seems – there is humanity.
Lisa came to the attention of Tracey Spencer,
part-owner of another brothel. When Ms Spencer learned
Lisa was only 15 she arranged to collect her at the
Camden Town brothel and took her to a safe house. Then
she called in the police. Lisa's pimp was arrested and
later found guilty of raping her and living off
immoral earnings. Lisa is now in care.
It's did not spell the end of the First Class Sauna.
Every evening, after 8pm, up to 10 girls are paraded
in a basement room for clients. Bianca, an
exceptionally pretty girl who looked about 18, told me
she was from Transylvania. "You know Dracula?" she
laughed. "It's me."
Bianca charges £80 for a half hour, an hour is £130.
"We can do whatever you like," she said. "If you want,
we can bring in one of the other girls." The number of
clients varies. One night she had nine. She refuses to
talk about the Albanians and became nervous and upset
at my questions. She lowered her voice: "There are
three very big security men nearby", she said.
My inquiries revealed that the First Class Sauna is a
place where the Albanian gangsters like to place their
girls. The establishment has a regular clientele among
whom many are middle-class, educated, professional
men.
Do these individuals know anything of the human
tragedies that may lie behind the forced smiles that
greet them in that basement? Anti-slavery campaigners
say that, if confiscation of assets makes sense for
those who deal in drugs, why shouldn't this apply to
those who deal in people?
While sex slavery continues to be low-risk and
high-profit, men like Bledi are unlikely to abandon
it.
I'm sure she is. She's "willing" not to have a leg broken or her face slashed! As willing as willing can be!
19 LINKED TO EURASIAN CRIME RING NAMED IN FEDERAL COMPLAINT FOR ALIEN SMUGGLINGAccording to the affidavit, the smuggling operation was operated by Serge Mezheritsky and Tetyana Komisaruk. Aliens would typically be recruited in Kiev, Ukraine, provided with valid Mexican tourist visas, flown to Mexico and eventually transported across the U.S. border by either foot, car, or boat. The smuggled aliens would then be brought to an interim location in Los Angeles from where many would be transported by domestic airline to their ultimate destinations in the United States. The Ukrainian nationals would typically be charged $7,000 for the smuggling fee, travel documents to Mexico, hotel accommodation, and other expenses. Those arrested today were . . .
Jury finds six of seven Ukrainians guilty of immigrant smugglingJune 26, 2002
By SANDRA MARQUEZ
Associated Press WriterLOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal jury found six of seven Ukranians guilty Wednesday of smuggling immigrant women to the United States for prostitution.
Federal prosecutors contended the smuggling ring lured hundreds of Ukrainians - many of them young women - to Los Angeles for a "full service" operation that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal profits.
The victims were transported in boats, in the trunks of cars, and even on foot, with stops in Mexico City and Baja California on the way to Los Angeles.
After nearly three days of deliberations, the jury convicted six defendants of smuggling and conspiracy to import women for purposes of prostitution.
The smuggling charges carry mandatory prison terms of five years. Sentencing was set for the fall.
The jury was unable to reach verdicts against Nataliya Korolova. U.S. District Judge Robert Takasugi ordered the panel to continue deliberations in her case. Convicted were Tetyana Komisaruk, 50, who is Korolova's mother; Komisaruk's husband, Veleriy Komisaruk, 40; her daughter Lorina Latysheva, 25; Latysheva's husband, Oleksandr Latyshev, 29; Serge Mezheritsky, 36; and Grigoriy Chernov, 50. . .
Serge Mezheritsky, who once ran unsuccessfully for the City Council of West Hollywood, is in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. His grandmother was married to a Lieutenant Major in the Soviet Army . From www.kpnews.com:
An FBI affidavit said Mezheritsky had plans for a prostitution ring that would bring him income of dlrs 10,000 a day, with more money coming from the blackmail of clients secretly videotaped during sexual encounters.FBI documents show Tetyana "Tanya" Komisaruk called the women "the fools", the "broads" and the "whores". In one FBI wiretap, she warned an accomplice that the "merchandise" could easily run away, and suggested that he "maybe . . . tie them up with chains."After one of his Ukrainian madams was found murdered in her San Fernando Valley apartment, the affidavit said Mezheritsky was overheard on an FBI wiretap telling an associate it "just totally killed my business."
"Russia's Illicit Exports
MOSCOW, July 10, 2001
"(CBS) Some of modern Russia's most valuable, if illicit, exports are women.
The CIA estimates that thousands of Russian women a year are lured to the U.S. with offers of good jobs as models, housekeepers or waitresses. Once there though, reports CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, they are trapped as sex slaves.
"The women who are victims of trafficking are absolutely right to be in fear of their lives," said Gillian Caldwell, the executive director of the Witness and Global Survival Network. She has spent two years investigating the trafficking of women.
"They're often offered dramatic sums of money compared to what they're able to earn at home and they have visions of a better life," said Caldwell. But instead, there's the sleazy reality they face. Using hidden cameras, representatives of Witness and Global Survival Network posed as traffickers — in Russia, they found plenty of willing accomplices.
One pimp, for example, said that for $5,000 each, he could easily entice victims with phony classified ads. Once abroad, the pimps strip the women of their wages and their passports and force them to work as prostitutes. If they don't cooperate, the pimps threaten to hurt them or members of their families.
Olga was only 17 when she signed a contract to work, she thought, as a waitress. "They locked us up and we were powerless because the local police were in on the game," recalled Olga.
These women may be naïve, but they are also victims of ruthless criminal organizations who use them to rake in millions of dollars. Most them of them are too terrified to ask for help or run away. So a coalition of Russian women's groups is trying to get the word out to beware of cushy foreign job offers. But the real challenge is to jail the pimps and that's what a new U.S. law is designed to do.
It increases the maximum sentence for some trafficking offences to life, allows victims to remain in the U.S. to testify against traffickers and provides for sanctions against countries which don't move to control the problem.
But tough as the new law is, Russia's economic reality is even tougher. The fact is, as long as Russian criminals have poor young women to prey on, the stream of trafficked victims from here is not likely to dry up.
©MMI, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/10/eveningnews/main300747.shtml
Isn't that typical of CBS liberals? You are poor so you have no choice but to become a sex slave. Grrrrrr. CBS doesn't want anyone to go after the animals who do this apparently.
I do think it's important to distinguish between shady dealings between worldwide mafia rings and "wink & nod" politicians from the far east and middle eastern countries, and careful not to label entire governments corrupt because of a few bad dudes.
Proportionally, that would be 120,000 American young women sold into sex slavery in a $40 billion a year business.
This isn't new either. The UK, the UN, Amnesty International and the USA have tried to stop it for years. Impossible that politicians,police and judges are not involved.
Is that another PC euphemism for Muslims?
Tropoljac should know. Same thing occurs with the "Russian" or "Ukrainian" mob. Need a translator with these articles.
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