No experience necessary

Sue Lloyd-Roberts reports from Latvia

Aija is an attractive, blond, Latvian 21 year old with the body of a ballet dancer and a fierce desire to escape the drudgery which has blighted the lives of the women since Latvia became part of the Soviet Union in 1941.

Little has changed for her since independence apart from the opening up of communications with the West. The only chance is to seek work abroad. Stepping into the Internet Café in central Riga, she posts a job application on the appropriate website, "I want a job in Denmark. I am 25, nice looking. Have dance experience. What do I need to go to work?"

The reply comes almost immediately. "Hey Aija! You need no experience. If you wish, you can come this week." She is told how to pose as a tourist when she gets to Copenhagen airport and to take a taxi to "Club 8" where she will be introduced to her duties as a dancer.

She buys her ticket, follows the instructions and gets to the Club. "I was shown the sauna and another place where, they said, they hold the sex parties. "You mean I have to have sex with the clients?", I asked the woman in charge. She said "yes, of course."

Latvian girls are targeted by the sex industry in Western Europe

We know all this because we followed Aija to the club and posted bodyguards outside. Aija is a journalist who wants to help expose the vulnerability of young girls from the former Soviet bloc to sex traffickers. "I see it as a mission", she says, "because I find it sad that so many girls from the Baltic States get caught like this, tempted by the prospect of earning money abroad." Before Aija could be put to work, we tipped the police off and they raided the club. They arrested and deported four Hungarian girls they found working there. Aija was allowed to go.

She got away with her "sting" but it was a risk. Another Latvian girl who applied for a job as an au pair, was told that she would be met at the airport by her family. The "family" turned out to be a pimp who took her straight to a brothel where she was expected to service her first client that first night.

What is a grotesque abuse of human rights is being dealt with as an immigration problem

Sue Lloyd-Roberts

She was never paid for that night nor for the three months of sex slavery which followed during which she earned thousands of pounds for her pimp. We heard of other girls in Denmark who had been kept prisoners, manacled in cellars. Another Latvian girl was murdered. And yet the penalties which the trafficker faces are pitiful. It is a low risk, high reward business.

Sex traffickers receive light sentences

There have been no charges brought against the management of the club where Aija applied for a job in Denmark and, if you phone the club today, they are still advertising the girls on offer (among them, a Russian and a Thai) and describing their sexual attractions. This does not surprise Dorit Otzen who champions the rights of women in Denmark.

The internet is making it easier for sex traffickers to operate

"The police don't know and they don't want to know anything about trafficking. You can get up to ten years for selling or importing drugs into Denmark and the longest sentence anyone has ever received for importing women is a year, and even then the Judge apologised to the man in court, saying it was a long sentence. You could cry!"

Women's groups throughout the EU are in similar despair about official attitudes to the problem. In the UK, the existing offences of sexual exploitation under which a trafficker can be charged carry a maximum two years' jail sentence. The maximum sentence for trafficking in drugs is life imprisonment.

The countries of the EU have pledged to review the situation but they are taking their time. Reformers point to progressive new laws in Australia where an offence under the new Slavery and Sexual Servitude criminal code carries 25 years as an example which , they say, should be copied by the countries of the EU.

Girls arrive and are then sold to the highest bidder, their passports confiscated to prevent escape

What is a grotesque abuse of human rights is being dealt with as an immigration problem. Some 80% of the girls now working in the brothels and massage parlours of Britain are foreign. After Albanians and Thais, those most commonly found are from the Former Soviet Union. This contemporary form of slavery is a global problem with nearly every country in the world now affected as sending (e.g. Latvia, the C.I.S. and Thailand), or destination points (e.g. Denmark and the UK).

The policy in Denmark and the UK, of removing women quickly without allowing them to give evidence, could well increase the number of women who become ensnared. In Copenhagen, Dorit Otzen says, "the police give the girls twenty four hours (after a raid) and then they're out. The pimps just go and collect another batch week after week, month after month." The demand and the supply is endless.

Reporter: Sue Lloyd-Roberts

Producer: Ewa Ewart

Editor: Fiona Murch

No Experience Necessary will be on BBC2's Correspondent programme at 1840 BST on Saturday, September 23rd.