Posted on 11/26/2005 7:17:30 PM PST by Lorianne
BUCHAREST -- In a back street in central Bucharest at 3 a.m., a surly Romanian orders a young woman to open her coat and twirl around. "You see, she is beautiful," he says in a cold monotone. "Health good, skin good -- no marks. We get doctor's papers. You want see body?"
"No, it's okay," I reply. "I can see she is in good condition."
She is slim, dark-haired and attractive but is cowed and passive in front of her dead-eyed controllers -- two men in their twenties wearing designer jackets. The next day in a smoky cafe, we agree on a price. "Okay, you have for 2,000 euros," says the negotiator opposite me -- about $2,800 Cdn. "We get passport and you can take."
This is no ordinary business deal. I have just agreed to buy Ileana Petrescu, a 19-year-old Romanian woman. Ileana was forced into prostitution two years ago. I am to be her third "owner" and the first to take her out of her home country.
I had made contact with the young woman's controllers through an intermediary two days before we struck the deal. I had entered the murky underworld of human traffickers by posing as a British "businessman" looking to purchase Eastern European girls to "work" in a club in London.
PURCHASE DISTURBINGLY EASY
Ileana had no say in the sale. When the pimps were there she spoke only once, to assure me, with sad, pleading eyes: "You will not need to beat me."
Reaching a deal to buy Ileana and take her to England was disturbingly easy and will come as a shock for Tony Blair and his ministers, who are losing the battle against the gangs trafficking women from countries such as Romania, Ukraine, Lithuania and Albania.
The victims -- most of whom are duped into believing that they are going to "normal" jobs as dancers, au pairs and housekeepers -- are coerced into prostitution all over Western Europe. Britain is a prime destination, as demand is constant, prices high and immigration controls are perceived to be lax.
According to the Home Office, up to 6,000 girls a year are brought into Britain and sold into the vice industry, many by illegal immigrants and failed asylum-seekers from Eastern Europe.
Last year, police arrested 1,456 people for human trafficking offences and seized #4.5 million. It is a relentless tide and officers admit that they are struggling against it. "We stop one gang and another one moves in straight away," said one detective at Scotland Yard.
The criminals are becoming more brazen. Last month, two men and a woman were convicted in Sheffield of auctioning two Lithuanian girls, aged 18 and 19, at a Gatwick Airport coffee shop for #3,000 each. The girls, who believed that they were being taken on holiday to stay with a friend's father, were made to work as prostitutes in London and Sheffield under threat of torture and death, until they escaped. One was raped repeatedly by her Serbian-born pimp, Tasim Axhami, 19, who was jailed for 21 years. His accomplice, Emiljan Beqirat, was sentenced to 16 years and Beqirat's girlfriend, Vilma Kizlaite, was given 11 years.
ILEANA THE VICTIM OF A TRAP
Last week, two failed asylum-seekers from Moldova were jailed for bringing almost 600 women into Britain illegally. Gavril Dulghieru, 36, who was sentenced to nine years, and his wife Tamara, jailed for five, used cloned credit cards, and stolen and bogus passports in one of Britain's biggest trafficking operations.
The girls were forced to work as prostitutes to pay the couple #300 a day rent and repay the alleged #20,000 cost of getting them to Britain.
Back in Bucharest, the translator and I take Ileana away for what her pimps assume is a "test-drive" to check her suitability for "entertaining" clients at the mythical bar in London. In fact, we head to a cafe and listen to her shocking but not unusual story. At 16, Ileana, an ill-educated girl from a poor family, was gang-raped at the back of a disco in her home town near Bucharest. It was not just a random act by violent thugs, but a deliberate tactic, the first stage of her "breaking in." Soon afterwards, she was befriended by a young man who, unbeknown to her, was an accomplice of -- possibly even one of -- the rapists. He became her boyfriend and "behaved like a gentleman," she says.
As a traumatized, vulnerable teenager she was thrilled to meet someone so kind. But, in reality, she was a victim of the "lover-boy" pimp trap, a ploy used by traffickers to ensnare young women suspicious of ads offering jobs as "dancers" abroad.
PIMP BUYS HER FOR 200 EUROS
After six weeks, Ileana's "boyfriend" took her to a Black Sea resort town for the weekend. As soon as they arrived, she was sold to a pimp for 200 euros, locked in a darkened room and forced to service clients day and night.
That ordeal lasted for a year before she was returned to Bucharest and sold to her present owners. For the past two years, she has been forced to have sex with an average of four customers a night. Yet her parents, who she still visits at Christmas, believe her story that she is working in a shop.
She shows no emotion about going to London and accepts that she will work as a prostitute: she knows or expects nothing else. But as she puffs on a cigarette and drinks Coke from a bottle there is a sign that her spirit is not completely crushed. "I don't want this to happen to my younger sister. If she does this I will cut off her hair," she blurts out.
During the negotiations for Ileana, the senior pimp gives her a good reference. "She works hard and has many clients," he says. "She will give no trouble."
Ileana has a passport but I have to obtain the visa if she is to enter Britain legally -- "no problem because you are British," the pimp says. "You write letter saying she will work for you in London. Or we have other ways."
He eyes me carefully and asks about my bar, where it is and whether I have any Romanian connections. Eventually, satisfied with my answers, he comes up with the figure of 2,000 euros. Pleased with the prospect of a fast buck -- and confident that he will quickly replace Ileana with what he calls "fresh meat" -- he assures me casually that I will get my money back by taking all of Ileana's earnings until she has paid off the 2,000 euros. "After that, you take the money for rent," he says.
FRAIL WOMAN LOOKED TERRIFIED
Ileana was one of three women offered to me for sale in Bucharest last week. The first trafficker changed his mind when his boss ruled that Ioana, another slender brunette -- who was also priced at 2,000 euros and seemed excited at the prospect of going to London -- was making him so much money that he did not want to lose her. The second girl, Elena, was offered to me by a baseball cap-wearing pimp in his forties called Gianni. We arranged to meet Elena, Gianni and Elena's "owners" in the city's Uniril Square the following night. Gianni arrived first and then a car with tinted windows and two heavies sitting in the front screeched to a halt before us. A nervous, pretty, sparrow-like blond climbed out of the back seat.
She looked terrified and, in an incongruously polite touch, proffered her hand to shake. Gianni explained that Elena was "quite new but very good." The two thugs asked me about my business and how I planned to take Elena back to England. She didn't have a passport but they could help with that, they said. I spent 20 uncomfortable minutes with them and arranged to meet again the next day when they would give me a price. But by then I had agreed to buy Ileana.
The day before striking the deal for Ileana, I drive to the 1,400-inmate high-security prison in Giurgiu, near the Bulgarian border, 65 kilometres south of Bucharest. Among its prisoners are 26 convicted people-traffickers. With sentences ranging from four to nine years, the traffickers all protest their innocence before going on to reveal the secrets of their sordid but lucrative business. They paint a depressing picture and say that the same could be said of many other ex-Soviet bloc countries.
VULNERABLE TEENS TARGETED
Most of the girls targeted by the recruiters are vulnerable teenagers, in the optimum age bracket of 15 to 19. They invariably come from poor, troubled families in the towns and villages of southern Romania, including Calarashi, Slobozia and Constanta. The initial recruiters are usually women, sometimes even the girls' own mothers. Some are taken to work in Bucharest and other cities, before being moved on, often to Western Europe, many via "girl markets" in Albania and Macedonia.
They are promised good jobs but when they arrive, their passports are seized and many are imprisoned in dingy rooms and they are forced to sell their bodies. Almost all their profits must be handed over to the pimps. Resistance is punished with gang-rape and beatings.
One inmate, Niculina Nicu, a tough-looking 29-year-old from Bucharest serving eight years for selling a woman for 200 euros, says girls are often sold several times in Romania before being trafficked abroad to satisfy the seemingly endless demand. Trafficking is carried out by people along the routes, he says, from village women who encourage girls to apply for "dancing jobs" abroad, to corrupt border guards.
Nicu insists that the girls would be worse off if they did not have pimps to "protect" them. "A lot of girls do it because they want a nice life," he says by way of justification.
Another trafficker, Caldararu Dumitru, 44, also serving eight years for trafficking, admits that many girls are given bogus contracts and forced into prostitution. "But many girls like it, because at least they have money in their pockets."
TRAFFICKERS HAVE KILLED WOMEN
At the Bucharest headquarters of the National Office for the Prevention of Human Trafficking, Silvio Erusencu, the Police Commissioner, is scathing of the traffickers' attempts to defend their actions. "It is exploitation," he says. "We have had girls telling us that traffickers have killed another girl in front of them to terrify them and break their spirit."
The Romanian authorities are doing what they can but they depend on charities to fund prevention measures such as official employment agencies for jobs abroad, poster campaigns to warn young women, and shelters for victims. Critics say the police do not do enough to catch traffickers and accuse officers of taking bribes from pimps.
One-hundred-and-thirty kilometres northwest of the capital, in the town of Pitesti, Iana Matei, who runs a refuge for women who have escaped forced prostitution, is angered by the suggestion that women enjoy being raped, beaten and forced to have sex with dozens of strangers. "These girls are slaves but they are dismissed as prostitutes and illegal immigrants. The British police deport them but the traffickers meet them at the airport and they are back in England within three weeks. Governments should co-operate so the girls can be helped back to their families or to shelters and the police can catch the traffickers."
Matei introduces me to Alina, who escaped from her captors earlier this year. Slowly, bravely, Alina, who left school at 14, tells me how she was pushed into prostitution by her own mother, a violent, hard-drinking divorcee from Slobozia, a small town 15 kilometres southeast of the capital. "She planned it with a neighbour who was a trafficker, someone I'd known all my life and thought I could trust," she said. They told her there was a housekeeper's job in Rome and her mother pressured her to go to make money for Alina's young son.
KEPT PRISONER IN FREIGHT CAR
Alina and two other girls were taken in a minibus on a two-day journey through Hungary and Austria to a hut on the outskirts of Rome where she was raped and beaten by her neighbour and two other men. She was given a "patch" at a bus-stop and ordered to charge men 50 euros for five minutes of sex in a car park guarded by the pimps. She resisted and was punched in the face, before being sold weeks later to three Romanians who hit and raped her. They kept her and five other girls in a disused, windowless freight train carriage with only a blanket to sleep on -- and forced her to do more 50-euro sex sessions.
Alina escaped one night and went to the police and gave evidence in court to help convict the traffickers. She was taken back to Romania in August and now lives at the shelter, trying to rebuild her life with her son, Robert, five. "I will never forget what I have been through," she said. "But I am lucky to be alive and I have to keep going for my son's sake."
As for Ileana, there is hope that she may, too, be freed from a life of sexual slavery. Following our investigation, details of her controllers have been passed on to the Romanian police who have launched an investigation. A police spokesman said: "We take reports of trafficking very seriously and will be looking into this case."
Soros is a major problem - both here and abroad.
Women don't seem to get as angry as men about the mistreatment of women. There seems to be an acceptance of this type of treatment towards women.
I know that a lot of women have low self as teem, but I don't know why. We are all Gods' children and I am no better than my neighbors' wife.
“Are you somehow suggesting that state laws regulating prostitution are unconstitutional? Or that laws prohibiting sex trade interstate (the Mann Act) are not proper to the Federal Government?”
I think he is. Odd how nobody noticed that for about the first 200 years of our Republic.
“A libertarian on FR or DU is one who doesn't trust the state to legislate on mattters beyond the scope of the Constitution.”
Or so they pretend. States have every constitutional right to outlaw prostitution, deliberately incorrect Supreme Court rulings notwithstanding.
“A Socialist on DU is one who has no problem with the exercise of state power, as long as that state power is used to enforce his chosen creed.”
That’s true.
“An Old Testament Retributionist on FR is also one who has no problem with the exercise of state power, as long as that state power is used to enforce his chosen creed.”
That’s not. The false moral equivalence is loose on FR.
Mr. Jeeves, there is a difference between pushing a little old lady into the path of a speeding bus, and pushing a little old lady out of the path of a speeding bus. It is perfectly reasonable to outlaw the one and not the other. The difference between socialists and conservatives is that socialists want to outlaw pushing the little old lady out of the path of the bus, and conservatives want to outlaw pushing her into the path of the bus. You hold that they are morally equivalent on the grounds that they’re both outlawing the pushing of a little old lady.
Another difference is that conservative Christians recognize the importance of limited government, while socialists cannot. You are asserting that conservative Christians do not recognize the importance of limited government, but the difference between you and they is only that they draw the line on this side of the vices you wish to protect.
Instead of arguing about where the line should be drawn, you try to discredit conservative Christians by falsely asserting that they don’t want to draw the line at all.
"Did it ever occur to anyone that many of these girls have chosen this life - and in many cases know exactly what they are getting in to?"
Even if they chose to become prostitutes, they did not choose to have their freedom of travel taken away, or their freedom to choose how many and what customers they will entertain, or to abdicate their right to quit. And they certainly didn't choose to have their captors steal their earnings.
" Did it ever occur to anyone that many of these girls have chosen this life ..."
None interviewed for this story. In Rome men sold themselves (and their wives and children) into slavery. That doesn't make it right, moral or proper.
The myth of the 'free' or liberated prostitute is widespread among those who use women for hire, it helps salve their conscience, or whatever they use in place of same.
"...before being trafficked abroad to satisfy the seemingly endless demand."
And therein lies the problem.
"I think a millstone tied around their neck and a trip over the edge of a boat is fitting."
Hey! Whaddaya got against bridges, huh? Why does it have to be a boat? Huh? Huh?
(Just wanted to create an opening for people to talk about "disarray in the anti-prostitution forces.")
Of course. Doesn't everyone want to get gang-raped, beaten, and held prisoner??? (/sarcasm)
Many women are incenced about the plight of women and children sold into sexual slavery ... you just don't hear about them much.
Yeah, well there are always those who have lost their moral compass and think like morons. Most are liberals, "moderate centrist" republicrats, or eurotrash.
Satan's greatest accomplishment was making people who think like this believe that he does not exist.
I'm still waiting on you two 'gentlemen' to explain your name calling and personal attacks. Are these 'libertarian' virtues, or simply freedom at work?
Screwtape.
I found this statement in your history lesson funny as hell.
Your kneejerk sensitivity is on overdrive and you also missed the point of my post. Since you raised the issues though...
Your dissertation suggests that slave ownership must have been like doing drugs. They wanted to stop, they really did. They just couldn't because of peer pressure. That, or it was highly addictive.
I would suggest that a true "comic book view" would be the belief that the founding fathers were super-heros who never did anything wrong.
PC emanates from over-rationalization, which your dissertation attempts to do with respect to slavery ownership. Your attempts to downplay slave ownership makes you look silly ("well gee, forced labor and whippings were not so bad b/c they looked down on sexual abuse").
I am willing to recognize the greatness of our founding fathers. However, I won't pretend they are comic-book super-heros and use PC-style rationalizations for the dark side of those times, as you attempt to do. It only reduces your credibility.
Why doesn't she tell them?
Unfortunately, in parts of the world, if a girl is forced into prostitution or even raped, her family will disown her. I would bet that this is the situation that exists for this girl. Very sad!
Miserably painful tomorrow pingout.
"I found this statement in your history lesson funny as hell."
Fine. Revel in your ignorance. Wallow in it. Have a great day.
What you say is the absolute truth.
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