These women have been torn from their lives, taken from their families and sold into slavery.
They are victims of a multi-billion dollar International business the traffics hundreds of thousands of women a year.
Tonight Frontline takes a hidden-camera look deep inside the new global sex trade.
- Our girls are in high demand since they're quite pretty and easily accessible.
- It's a very profitable business.
Frontline also follows one man who's determined to get his wife back before she's lost for good to the world of the traffickers
It's an extraordinary journey that raises tough questions about governments around the world
Largely indifferent to the traffickers abuses.
- I hadn't encountered much evil in my life.
- Thought I'd find at least one kind person
- Or that one of those pimps would set me free.
Odessa Ukraine a port town on the Black Sea known for its nightlife and it's beautiful women.
Under the old Soviet Union it was a center of organized crime
Now Odessa has become a major hub for the global sex trade
Women are lured to the port of Odessa from all over the struggling countries of Eastern Europe
with promises of badly needed work abroad
Many are unaware of what the traffickers have in store
The production team has set up cameras here
- We knew if we wanted to get inside a story that we had to be in a place where it was so prevalent that
- everybody would have an example or know people who are trafficked
- and that's what brought us ultimately to Odessa
Frustrated with an inability to chase the traffickers overseas
The Ukrainian secret service has given us a tip about a suspected sex trader who regularly brings girls through here
Across from the port on the famous Odessa steps we secretly film as she traffic's young women to Turkey
We've been asked to call her Olga
- The Secret Service said that she runs a legitimate business as a cover and she basically takes women
- from Moldova and Ukraine to work as domestics in Turkey
- At amongst these women are some younger women who she sells to traffickers and pimps in Turkey
- We wanted to answer some fundamental questions like why don't these women run away and how do they get across borders?
- And how do they get kidnapped and how could they really be enslaved and you know at this point in history?
- Sex trafficking the only started with the fall of the Soviet Union
- When the borders opened up
- And it became much easier for traffickers to find desperate girls, girls with no education
- Girls that they can fool and persuade them to go broke
We watched as Olga settled the girls in for the trip across the Black Sea
Many are destined for the legitimate jobs that Olga has promised
But according to a convicted trafficker who agreed to speak with us some of these young women are headed for a far worse fate
- Established after the average trafficking ring has three to four middlemen
- The transporter takes her from Ukraine and puts her on a boat in Turkey. She's transferred to someone else
- And she's then sold on to a pimp
We located two women who were trafficked on this same boat six months earlier by Olga
- That's the woman who brought us to Turkey and sold us.
- I thought I was going to work in a shop.
- We were told that there are lots of women from Moldova and Russia working there
- We were told that we could earn $200 a month
- I can't say I was very happy or excited.
- I worried a bit
- Because we were heading for a foreign country
- We hoped everything would be okay
Turkey has become one of the largest markets for women trafficked from Ukraine in the old Soviet block
It's lacks visa requirements make it an easy port of entry to Europe in the Middle East for traffickers like Olga
- She got through customs with absolutely no problem
- The traffickers who transport these women have a very easy time of it
- Because the women know that they're going to be working illegally in the country that they're going to
- They actually help the trafficker by lying to the customs officials
- At this point we didn't know exactly what she was gonna do we didn't know where she was gonna go
- We didn't know what kind of vehicle she would have
- All we knew is that she often goes to a cafe and sells the girls. That's what we had heard
The plan is to keep on Olga's trail in Istanbul and see where the women and her group are taken
The crews Turkish fixer has a good idea where they're headed
Aksaray is a bustling district in the heart of Istanbul home to growing numbers of expatriate Soviets
Compared to what they left behind Aksaray is full of opportunities
But for many young women Aksaray will be the bitter end to their dreams
Olga leads the team to a notorious spot in Aksaray
This parking lot is an unofficial market for Russian migrant workers
Goods are exchanged deals are made
Legal and illegal workers head to their new employers
And women are sold
- She asked us to wait for a while then she approached us and said "Come with me"
- We followed her and crossed the road
- There were some men at a table outside a cafe
- She brought us to those men and said that one of them was the owner of the shop
- She told us they were going to drive us to the apartment where we were going to stay
- She talked to them in Turkish. Took money from them and counted it
- I saw her counting the money
- I got scared. She said don't worry
- everything is fine
- Go with those men
- They're good people. Don't worry
- We guessed that she was selling us but we hoped we were wrong
- We hope that we had misunderstood things
- Look, the police are right there and she's making a sale.
- She's not afraid of anything.
- She destroyed my life.
Once trafficked into sexual slavery the women are quickly put to work to start turning a profit for their new owners
- They brought us to an apartment
- That night a man woke me up
- He told me to get dressed because I was going to work. I asked him. Why am I going to work now?
- He said get dressed and you'll see
- He took me to a hotel
- It was a nightmare
- Everything depends on the psychological state of the girl
- If she has a weak psyche
- She usually breaks down and accepts that you'll have to work as a prostitute
- He simply raped me I screamed and tried to run away, he was so cruel
- They forced us to have sex with different Turkish men
- They did whatever they wanted to us
Journalist Victor Malarek, spent two years interviewing traffickers and their victims
- People have said to me well, these girls can run they can't
- they're taken to these apartments and these houses usually in remote areas and men come in and break them
- They make her submit to every indignity in front of all the girls they beat her and do whatever
And all the other girls fall right into line
Back at the port of Odessa a few days later. Olga's business is done
The Ukrainian Secret Service says she'll soon return here with a new group of recruits
Officials estimate that hundreds of thousands of women have been trafficked from Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union.
So many that an office has been set up right at the port to help the victims
Today it's visited by Viral. A man who says his wife was sold into the sex trade
- When did this happen?
- She left Odessa on June 12th.
- On board the Caledonia.
Trafficked on the same ship as Anya and Katerina. Her name is Katya
- And you say your wife was pregnant when she left.
- Yes
- How far long?
- Around four-and-a-half months.
- She's been gone almost a month.
- She went with him -- Vlad.
- She went with Vlad?
- Who's Vlad?
-An acquaintance who sold my wife.
- Katya and Viral met in Odessa where Viral worked as a bartender
Her nightmare began when an acquaintance of theirs offered to take her to Turkey
Where she could buy goods cheaply for her mother's market stall back home
- Basically an acquaintance of theirs had told him that he was going to Turkey anyway
- so he might as well accompany Katya and he speaks Turkish and he could just help her it and watch over her
- Week after they left for Turkey
- Viral got a phone call from this gentleman Vlad saying that I had sold his wife for a thousand bucks
- For Katya, I was paid a thousand dollars
- That's how they priced Katya at the time
- He said I've sold your wife I immediately realized that I shouldn't jump on him
- Otherwise he'd disappear
- Like, he wouldn't give me his telephone number and I would never find him or my wife.
- I spoke to him nicely.
- Why did I phone him? To say that I felt guilty might sound absurd after what I did
- However strange as it may seem guilt played its part
Vlad decided to help Viral after learning that the woman he sold Katya to had then resold her to...
... a notoriously violent pimp called Apo.
- Apo is a person
- Without a shot of human decency
- He has no principles whatsoever.
- At times he can be
- Very cruel
- Vlad gave Viral the phone number for Apo. And Viral called pretending to be Katya's original trafficker
- I called Apo and negotiated with him directly to buy her back.
- I asked him. What do you want girls or money? And he said money.
Katya was being held in Antalya Turkey. A tourist town on the Mediterranean
Viral set up a meeting with Apo at the airport to buy Katya back.
He then went to the Turkish police
- Devastation police everywhere in order to nab him
- Then I called Apo and he came
- When they start talking to each other
- I understand something went wrong and you know either
- Apo saw a police officer or somebody blew a whistle
- Apo got very suspicious and he jumped in the car and he took off.
- And that was it. Apo no longer trusted Viral.
- Apo assumed that he was being framed by Viral and the Viral had called the police
Viral now feels that informing the police was a grave mistake
- What can you think of the Turkish police?
- There were 60 officers involved in a guarded Airport
- With only one entrance and one exit there's a checkpoint and tons of police and they let Apot slip away
- I'll do anything to get her out of there
- Whatever it takes I don't care
- I'd sell my fucking organs.
- Katya didn't suspect what kind of plans I had for her in Turkey. How could she suspect?
- My plan was to keep her in the dark
- Katya ended up in place where I didn't want her to be
Though one of the smallest countries in Eastern Europe Moldova has become a leading exporter of women and girls into the global sex trade
Posing as buyers and wearing hidden shirt cameras the crew set out to see how pervasive human trafficking has become here
- I had a business card that said exotic entertainment
- I pretend that I was a guy from the West who's interested in buying Eastern European girls
- From the get-go it was very plain and simple.
- Can I buy girls from you? 
Yes
- How much?
- She got very excited because there she had a brand new opportunity to start selling girls to North America
- So the next step for her is to find those kind of girls for me
Newspaper ads are often used by recruiters
Some women understand their code for sex work but a good percentage are fooled by the traffickers
- 70% of the girls know exactly where they're going and what they're going for
- 20% of them agree to be exotic dancers, but often don't suspect what else might happen to them and the remaining 10% are totally unaware
- In other words, they are brought there under false pretences
Once moved out of Moldova, Ukraine and the other major source countries the women's trafficking Odyssey begins
For Katya, it's now been five weeks in captivity and all communication with her traffickers has gone dead
Trafficking victims often disappear without a trace
What little we know about what Katya may be enduring is pieced together from those who managed to escape
Today 23 year old Tonya is seeing her family for the first time
Since she was trafficked to the underground brothels of Turkey
- Before this I hadn't encountered much evil in my life
- I couldn't believe places like that actually exist in this world.
- I thought I'd find at least one kind person
- Or that one of those pimps
- What set me free
When Tonya left home six months earlier she told her daughter that she was going to work abroad to make desperately needed money
The idea came from a woman in town who knew her family was struggling
It's common for the first person in the trafficking chain to know the victim personally
- Anyone who works with people has to understand their psychology. You have to know how to lure somebody
- They don't even have money for basic food
- So most people try to find work abroad once they hear words like abroad or big money
- They're hooked
- I started crying I said that I wanted to go back home to my child
- The other girls told me. We also have children and we also work and you'll have to do it too
- There's nothing you can do about it
- They said they all got there the same way I did
- I prayed
- Asked god to somehow help me get back home
Viral is now headed back to Turkey to rescue his wife from Apo the pimp who owns her
This time without the help of the police
- Viral knows this may be his last chance to get Katya back and all he has is Apo's telephone number
- So we are using his phone right?
Apo has a wife named Maria who is his partner in crime.
At their airport meeting two weeks earlier
At this point Katya could be anywhere in Antalya
Viral and the team decided to search for Katya in Turkey's hotel brothels and discos
- Everybody in Turkey know where the Russian discotheques are where full of Russian prostitutes
- We went to those places was very hoping to find Katya there
- But Katya was not trafficked into one of this disco places. She was held in the private house
Posing as interested clients the crew was led to an underground brothel discreetly tucked away in a typical Turkish neighborhood
They were then taken inside one of the unmarked apartments where traffic women told us they were kept virtual prisoner
- They took me to a villa
- They locked me in
- We worked for as long as we had clients
- 24 hours a day
- They didn't see us as human beings
- But just as whores
- Just as flesh that they could use. That's all
- We serviced between 8 and 15 men a day
- There were 22 girls in a 3-bedroom apartment.
- And each girl got beaten up at least once a day
- Sometimes Turkish policeman used our services
- One girl ran away and went to the police for help, but she was taken back to her pimp
To offer some hope the traffickers suggest to the women that they can work their way to freedom by paying back their purchase price
- Death bondage represents the money that a girl is told she has to work off that amount is easily inflated if the pimp wants
- That way the debt never goes away and she continues to work without ever receiving a penny
-  He said you'll be paid $500 a month
- But the girls told me he never pays $500 a month
- He always finds a reason to find you
- For example, if a client asks you to do something and you refuse
- And the client complains to the pimp
- He'd charge you for a month or two and you'd end up working for nothing
If a trafficked woman manages to pay off her so-called debt her pimp can then simply sell her to someone else
This creates a cycle of debt bondage from which there is almost no escape
- One pimp sells her to another he sells her to a third this third one to a fourth and so on
Tanya was sold three times before she realized that she had left home pregnant and was starting to show
her new owner noticed
- My pimp said
- You're going to have an abortion
- I said that I didn't want to. That I wanted to have the baby
- He said if I refused
- He'd make my life hell
- And I ended up with a miscarriage anyway
- He forced me to have an abortion
- Five days later. I was sent to a client
- You know, they just stuck a sponge inside me to stop the bleeding and sent me to work
- Yeah, and try not to touch your shirt because there's a microphone in there as well. 
- If you're sitting at a table having coffee
- make sure coffee not in front of you
Okay, okay
Viral takes a taxi the crew trails close behind
Maria has set the meeting in a public place a shopping mall full of tourists and affluent Turks
We follow him inside with a second camera
Maria's come alone, but she's afraid Viral has brought the police
Maria accuses Viral of trying to get Apo and her arrested at the airport a few weeks earlier
She says the Turkish policeman confirmed this
As the conversation continues Maria, let's slip some surprising admissions about Katya
Maria promises to speak to Apo and set up a meeting between the three of them
As he waits for her call
Viral begins to worry that Apo and Maria may simply get rid of the problem by selling Katya to another pimp
Passed on through the sex trafficking network. She could be anywhere in the world within days
- These women are being trafficked to the West
- In the United States, they figured twenty twenty-five thousand a year
- But Europe is the major destination Germany upwards of eighty thousand forty fifty thousand in the Netherlands Spain and Italy and
- Turkey all of these countries are getting trafficked women
- We have laws in every country on the planet that say you can't abduct people you can't kidnap you can't
- Force them into prostitution you can't assault them
- The laws are there, but they're not being enforced
A Day has passed and Viral still hasn't heard from Maria or Apo
Most trafficking victims have no way out a few escaped and some are let go when they're of no more value
But many get caught up in police raids like this one in Antalya
What seems at first like a rescue will actually become the beginning of a new ordeal
- When a cops find them they deport them, please just simply bring them to the immigration authorities and they are deported
- There are revictimized yet again by the system
- In most countries trafficked women are treated as illegal immigrants with no access to the justice system and
The traffickers and pimps are rarely pursued
- There is no witness protection for them
- Traffickers often know that they have children and use that as a threat against them
- So most often the girls are not willing to testify because they're scared
Oksana was caught in a police raid and deported back to her hometown in Ukraine
In her 8 months in captivity
She was able only once to attempt escape
- I was desperately trying to think of some way to get out.
- I wanted to go to the authorities
- But I couldn't
- I called home
- She was saying mother I can't take it anymore. Please go to the police. Maybe they can rescue me.
- I went to our police and they said didn't she know what she was going for?
- Meaning she knew what she was getting into and we don't deal with prostitutes
Thirty-six hours have passed Viral is growing more suspicious that Katya has been moved or sold
With no one returning his calls
Viral comes up with a plan to confront Maria with the undercover video from their meeting
- Don't do that yet. Stop with the tape yet, Jenna
He says he brings me out of the car with a tape recorder and server. Here's the evidence. We're gonna
You guys be in the car then he says Bailey enough generally as new yakity yakity
Bureau's plan has put the production team in an ethical bind. I don't know if we're crossing a line. What what do you guys think?
At this point
He's desperate. He wants us dead. He thinks it's gonna work frankly
I think there's more of a danger that if they see that they're at the point of giving up his wife. They'll just
Anything I'm just worried that
that he puts himself in more danger and
then he ends up getting the crap beaten out of him if not worse and
That we end up being responsible for that because we provided the materials for that
none of this matters until Viral gets hold of Maria or Apo
Increasingly desperate
Viral cruises the streets of Antalya in the vague. Hope of spotting Katya
But he now fears are lost to the world of the traffickers
Back in Ukraine just over a month after a sympathetic client helped free her. Tania is struggling
She and her family live near Chernobyl when the worst nuclear reactor accident in history took place
Now they are plagued with health problems
Her sister has a brain tumor and her brother has chronic abdominal troubles
- The doctor said that we need a lot of money for special treatments
- He said that if he doesn't get treated. We might as well order a coffin for him
With no other way to pay just a few hundred dollars for her brother's operations
Tanya has made a decision that's almost unimaginable to most trafficked women
To return to the country where she was held prisoner and
prostitute herself
- I have no other choice
We've poured a huge amount of money because we didn't want to lose him
And we've been told to pay it back if we don't we'll be in trouble especially our children
Anything could happen to them when we're not around
So I have to go there to earn the money
Please understand that I just want to save my brother
Vrl finally gave up trying to reach Oppo and Maria
After searching the streets of Antalya for days he returned in despair to Tarasco
But his persistent phone calls did have an effect
Feeling the pressure Papo and Maria took got you to the antalya airport and sent her home
So many of these girls come home psychologically
Devastated they come home with all kinds of medical problems. Sexually transmitted diseases there. They're HIV positive. They have AIDS
There's nothing for them
What does she go back to when she had serviced ten men a night?
I'm good at uh, it was the work. He said his name was Apple. No, I was in hysterics
So a girl came in she was a bit taller than me she was blonde
Those are not sure
She told me that I belonged to them
And that they bought me in order to have sex with their clients
When I started to resist she said
You're not the first we already had girls like you
Those girls that didn't want to do it at first work and enjoy it now
I'm good. I told her
If you like two Turkish men
She slapped me the left
Quechua turned out to be a stubborn girl. He's got a girl with attitude
Apple took a very aggressive approach to Katya. She didn't even have a chance to realize what happened to her
Really they brought a man because I I'm told me if I don't satisfy him
They'll kill me
But when the man entered the room I started fighting with him what about us two other men came in
With his ID and pinned me down
Don't nobody look what they drugs me
And beat me
And raped me
The worst I thought it was all over for me
Don is not yourself. They knew from the beginning that I was pregnant Vlad knew that
With veeral's help the Ukrainian police arrested Vlad and charged him with sex trafficking
setting the stage for a rare prosecution in Odessa
This was when the team first saw Vlad as he was led into court he
Has spent one month in custody
Now he faces up to 15 years in prison
In the name of Ukraine's - Vlad V is accused of criminal activity
The accused is charged with finding women in the republic of moldova
And bringing them to the city of Istanbul Turkey in order to sell them for the purpose of sexual exploitation
Katya was willing to testify against Vlad, but she was not even notified of the court date
It was very unusual
either vrl
No
Katya were invited the court the proceedings took about 15 minutes the judge read the
Verdict and let him off the hook
the defendant is hereby sentenced to no less than five years imprisonment the
Accused will be released from the five-year sentence and put on five years probation
Is the sentence clear to you?
The court session is adjourned
The prosecution rate is abysmal in most of these countries
the official line is
Exactly what you would hope it would be which is we're doing as much as we can. We have a counter trafficking unit
We're trying to prosecute
Is it effective?
There's two sequential Sassoon
I'm a bitch le monde elusively in Lancet. Yep. I mean if I'm swooshing you badly able to swallow I
Guess I had a good lawyer
I'm grateful the judge turned out to be a good guy as well. He understood my situation
Vlad agreed to talk to us about what he'd done
Because he felt he had trying to do right by Katya and vrl
even if too late
Me applause - okay
The Prodigy
Business souvenirs SB Enya was the Miranda shake
But targeted prostitute. Oh, yeah
No sheesh come
Because of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her traffickers Katya had to terminate her pregnancy
The damage, she says may never be healed
We left Vlad just after he was freed from jail in Odessa
He said he was headed back to Moldova and would not traffic again
We informed the Moldovan police about Olga they have taken no action against her
Not long after returning to prostitution tanya was caught in a police raid in Turkey and deported back to Ukraine
The little brother died a month after we filmed him
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