06 February 2011

ROMANIA / UK / Sordid Sex Trafficking Revealed In One Girl's Account.

GUARDIAN/ Long form piece /
by Mark Townsend /

   The sordid and sorry tale of 17-year-old Romanian student Marinela Badea.
   She was forced from her home and plunged into the nightmare of six months of brutal sex in England.
   One moment she was returning from school in Alexandria, two hours drive from Bucharest, then she was gone.
      A pimp forced her into prostitution with regular beatings. "I didn't even know where I was going," she says now. "I couldn't trust anyone, I had no idea of the law. I was so scared."
     Badea estimates more than 100 Romanians work as prostitutes in Birmingham alone with many coerced to do it.
    Thousands also work in the pan-European sex trade, the vast majority in Spain where prostitution is legal.