Correspondent: No Experience Necessary Tx Date: 23rd September 2000 This script was made from audio tape – any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible 00.00.00 Opening Music 00.00.08 Music 00.00.13 Sue Lloyd Roberts Half a million women are transported to the European Union by sex traffickers every year. 00.00.19 Music 00.00.20 Sue Lloyd Roberts It’s become a multi billion pound business with the profits on a par with the drugs trade. 00.00.26 Music 00.00.27 Sue Lloyd Roberts But while a convicted drug dealer can expect up to twenty years in jail, a dealer in women can get away with a few months. 00.00.35 Music 00.00.39 Sue Lloyd Roberts With the help of the Internet the sex trade has become easily accessible - to innocent young women and their predators alike. 00.00.48 Music Subtitles 00.00.54 Woman 1 What job is on offer? 00.00.55 Woman 2 A dancer. 00.00.57 Woman 1 Do I need any experience? 00.01.02 Woman 2 No, you only have to want to work. 00.01.07 Music 00.01.16 Title Page NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY 00.01.28 Aston RIGA, LATVIA 00.01.33 Sue Lloyd Roberts Newcomers to capitalism in the former republics of the Soviet Union have learnt that the best chance of achieving personal wealth lies in a business venture in the West. 00.01.45 Sue Lloyd Roberts The young have hastened to acquire the communication skills of international commerce. 00.01.54 Sue Lloyd Roberts Twenty-five year old Aija searches the net to further her claim to the opportunities abroad. 00.02.07 Sue Lloyd Roberts Answering an advert offering jobs in a club in Denmark, she describes herself as good looking and a dancer. She asks if she needs anything else for the work. 00.02.24 Sue Lloyd Roberts She’s heard that Latvian girls who can go to Denmark easily on tourist visas are popular in clubs in Copenhagen and she’s not surprised when the answer comes back straightaway from Luna. 00.02.44 Sue Lloyd Roberts No, she needs no experience and yes, she can have a job. She’s invited to call to confirm the arrangements. 00.02.59 Luna Hello. 00.03.00 Aija Hi, this is Aija from Latvia. Can I speak with Luna? 00.03.07 Luna Yes this is Luna speaking. 00.03.08 Aija I am calling about a job in a club. 00.03.11 Luna Yes. 00.03.12 Aija And I’m ready to go to next week, maybe Monday. 00.03.18 Luna But is it ok if you come number twenty-four because now is full, the place is full. 00.03.24 Aija Ok and I will have definitely job? 00.03.27 Luna One hundred percent no problem. 00.03.30 Aija And what exactly I will need to do? 00.03.32 Luna It’s nothing really, it’s just about to be with other guests and to participate in the live show and so on, you know, this kind of things. And to dance a little bit. 00.03.43 Aija Mmm and how much money I will have? 00.03.47 Luna It’s a half-half. Fifty-fifty. 00.03.52 Aija Ah sorry, what fifty, what do you mean? 00.03.56 Luna You take half and I take half. 00.04.03 Sue Lloyd Roberts The young may find the workings and benefits of capitalism in the newly independent Latvia confusing but of one thing they’re certain - they know that the rewards lie outside their native country. 00.04.17 Sue Lloyd Roberts They’re increasingly impatient of the slow pace of change since the break-up of the Soviet Union and they’re disenchanted by how only the few have prospered from the new order. 00.04.32 Sue Lloyd Roberts It’s better, they conclude, to take a chance and seek work in the West than risk ending up like so many of their parents’ generation. 00.04.48 Aston TATIANA KUROVA Women’s Issues Centre, Latvia Voice over Women will go no matter what because there’s simply nothing to eat here. There are women who live beyond imaginable limits of poverty. It’s very difficult to stop these sixteen and seventeen year olds and make them think. They see how their parents live on crumbs of bread and water and they don’t want it. They’re ready to change their situation tomorrow or even yesterday. 00.05.38 Sue Lloyd Roberts Typical young Latvians like Luba and Sveta are well educated, ambitious but without the connections to help them find work abroad. They’re delighted when they find an advert placed by an agency in Riga looking for hotel domestics to go to the Republic of Ireland. 00.06.01 Sveta Voice over I want to go abroad to learn the language and to earn some money to pay for my higher education. I can never earn that kind of money here. 00.06.15 Luba Voice over It’s going to be a new experience. It will change everything and give us a new lease of life. We’ve started looking at the map. We’re trying to picture ourselves there and figure out how we’ll feel in this new world. 00.06.35 Sveta Voice over We talk non-stop about the trip. We even started packing our suitcases. 00.06.47 Sue Lloyd Roberts But the girls become suspicious. Although the agency says there are jobs for them in Ireland, there are inexplicable delays. And why, they wonder, are they told to have an Aids test when, as they later find out, there are no such requirements for foreign workers there. 00.07.07 Sue Lloyd Roberts They carry on with preparations for their trip but decide to seek advice. 00.07.18 Sue Lloyd Roberts They call on the official at the Ministry of Labour who’s responsible for licensing the agencies, which send Latvians to work abroad. She says she remembers the agency’s director coming to get his licence and how rude and offensive he’d been. 00.07.35 Sue Lloyd Roberts She now finds there are other irregularities. 00.07.44 Gita Miruskina Subtitles This agency only got a licence on the 30th of June… yet you signed your contract on the 4th of May. 00.07.56 Luba Subtitle So our contract is illegal? 00.08.06 Gita Miruskina Subtitles This contract doesn’t say anything about the agency’s obligations, or guarantee any work. It is not written correctly. 00.08.23 Sue Lloyd Roberts She tells Sveta and Luba that she has had another complaint from a girl who was asked by the agency to provide her bust measurements. She says she’s concerned but so far she hasn’t investigated. 00.08.44 Aston GITA MIRUSKINA Ministry of Labour, Latvia Voice over It doesn’t take a great philosopher to figure out straightaway what these girls are being prepared for. It’s exactly this kind of job which doesn’t require any language skills – no experience necessary. It’s purely for sexual exploitation. 00.09.02 Sue Lloyd Roberts But these girls are clearly vulnerable; don’t you have a moral responsibility to investigate? 00.09.09 Gita Miruskina Voice over I don’t have the authority or ways to investigate when someone comes here with a contract already signed. My only weapon is to take a map and see if such a place exists in Ireland. I am very restricted and that’s dreadful. All I have at my disposal are my Ministry’s instructions. I can’t have any emotions and up to now nobody in our country has asked for moral responsibility from civil servants. 00.09.45 Sue Lloyd Roberts With no hard evidence to go on and no official enquiry the girls still want to believe that the employment agency will help them. 00.09.54 Sue Lloyd Roberts They go back to the company. By this time we’ve equipped them with a secret camera and they ask their contact there, Edgar, whether there’s been any news from their future employer in Ireland. 00.10.13 Girls Subtitle What’s going on with our work applications? 00.10.17 Edgar Subtitles I don’t know. He promised to fix visas and everything else… within the four weeks. When I talked to him, he confirmed that he’d called about visas, but no news as yet. Subtitles 00.10.39 Girl 1 What’s the name of the place we’re going to go to? Girl 2 Portumna. 00.10.44 Girl 1 Is that the name of a town? Edgar Yes. 00.10.53 Edgar Subtitles His name is Con Foley and his hotel and restaurant is called ‘Foley’s’. Then it says; ‘Main Street, Portumna, County Galway.’ ‘County’ means ‘main region’. 00.11.04 Girls Subtitle And is the hotel big? 00.11.08 Edgar Subtitle No, not really. 00.11.12 Girls Subtitles What about these Polish or Lithuanian girls who are already there? 00.11.17 Edgar Subtitle I said they were already working for him. 00.11.27 Sue Lloyd Roberts The girls ask for and get an e-mail address for Mr Foley so that they can communicate directly with the Lithuanian girls who, they’ve been told, are already working with him. 00.11.45 Sue Lloyd Roberts Understandably Sveta and Luba also want to ask Mr Foley for details about the job in his hotel. And I give them a hand by typing out a message in broken English. 00.12.01 Sue Lloyd Roberts But the e-mail address they’ve been given doesn’t exist and of course there’s no reply. 00.12.11 Sue Lloyd Roberts We check and find that there is no Foley’s Hotel listed in Portumna and so we now go and talk to Edgar. He offers to get Mr Foley on his mobile phone but can’t get through. 00.12.26 Sue Lloyd Roberts So you are sending these young girls from Riga to a man whose only contact you have is a mobile phone, which is not working today. 00.12.35 Edgar He is out of house and he has left his mobile phone…. 00.12.41 Sue Lloyd Roberts And what is the name of the hotel to which you are sending young girls from Riga to work as domestics? 00.12.48 Edgar I sending young girls to work as domestics for Mr Con Foley living in that type of address, ok. 00.12.56 Sue Lloyd Roberts Right, what we find very strange is that the Republic of Ireland does not require foreigners who come in to work to have Aids tests. Why have you asked several of the young women you are sending to Ireland to have an Aids test? 00.13.08 Edgar Ah sorry, it’s official information that I have get in Embassy of Ireland. I have called and I have asked what type of documentation are necessary to get a work permit, official work permit, to work in Republic of Ireland. I have got a list of documents and it also was include an Aids test. 00.13.27 Sue Lloyd Roberts Well we telephoned the Foreign Service yesterday and they said they do not require Aids tests from any outside country, let alone Latvia. So could I see this document please you mention? 00.13.47 Sue Lloyd Roberts Of course they can’t find the document because it doesn’t exist. Perhaps, they suggest, that it was Mr Foley who asked for the Aids test. 00.13.56 Sue Lloyd Roberts Why are you asking several young women, who you are sending to Ireland to work as domestics in hotels or restaurants, for their bust measurements? 00.14.05 Edgar For to, they can get, the employer needs to know how, what size uniform. 00.14.12 Sue Lloyd Roberts Yes but why do you ask for his information even before you’ve given them a travel date, even before they know where they going, even before there’s a formal contract between you? Why is that the first question you ask? 00.14.23 Edgar I am just doing my job. I searching…. 00.14.25 Sue Lloyd Roberts What is your job? What is your job? What is this organisation? Where are you sending these young women? 00.14.30 Edgar It is an employment agency. 00.14.33 Sue Lloyd Roberts And so we set off for Ireland to find out what kind of employment agency it is. 00.14.39 Music 00.14.41 Aston PORTUMNA, EIRE 00.14.52 Sue Lloyd Roberts The pace of life in County Galway on the West Coast of Ireland is slow – very slow. 00.15.00 Sue Lloyd Roberts And yet this is the town where, the agency told us, they’d already sent a number of girls. And so we were curious to know how the locals were getting on with them. 00.15.10 Sue Lloyd Roberts Have you seen any Latvians in the area? 00.15.12 Postman No, no, we haven’t seen any Latvians no. 00.15.15 Sue Lloyd Roberts Have you heard of any around? 00.15.17 Postman No, only Spanish. 00.15.18 Sue Lloyd Roberts But we’ve heard that Latvians have been coming to Portumna in some numbers. 00.15.22 Postman No, I didn’t hear of any, no, coming from there. 00.15.31 Sue Lloyd Roberts Maybe the postman had missed them but surely they’d know at head office. 00.15.37 Sue Lloyd Roberts We’ve heard there’s a lot of Latvians in town. 00.15.41 Lady Umm, not to the best of my knowledge. Not so far. There’s a Spanish, a group of Spanish students here at the moment but Latvians, no I haven’t heard… 00.15.50 Sue Lloyd Roberts Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians? 00.15.52 Lady Not that I know of. 00.15.54 Sue Lloyd Roberts People couldn’t help but they were very friendly 00.15.57 Sue Lloyd Roberts We’re talking about how they come here for casual jobs. 00.16.01 Café Owner Yeah, I haven’t come across any, no. Not so far but may be on their way though. Would you like a cup of coffee? 00.16.09 Sue Lloyd Roberts There was no sign of the hotel, restaurant and café all, we’d been told, in need of foreign workers. The Burger Express was the only place asking for part time help. 00.16.25 Sue Lloyd Roberts Inside the pace of life was slightly faster than elsewhere in the town but no one was rushed off their feet. 00.16.34 Sue Lloyd Roberts It was here that we found Mr Con Foley himself. 00.16.39 Sue Lloyd Roberts Now Mr Foley we were talking to this agent in Riga and he says he’s sent several Latvian girls and at least two Lithuanian girls to you already to work in Portumna. 00.16.49 Mr Foley No he hasn’t no. 00.16.52 Sue Lloyd Roberts Are you going to employ any girls from Latvia? 00.16.54 Mr Foley Well I would consider employing one girl maybe. 00.16.56 Sue Lloyd Roberts But none yet? 00.16.57 Mr Foley Oh none as yet, no, no. 00.17.00 Sue Lloyd Roberts For what kind of work? 00.17.01 Mr Foley Well working in the restaurant, fast food restaurant, stuff like that. 00.17.05 Sue Lloyd Roberts And you’ve got a work permit for them? 00.17.06 Mr Foley I have to apply for a work permit yes. Sue Lloyd Roberts Right. 00.17.09 Mr Foley Which I’ve just done yesterday for one. 00.17.11 Sue Lloyd Roberts The impression we got from the agent in Riga is you’ve had a long-term relationship, that they’ve been sending girls to you for some time. 00.17.17 Mr Foley Oh no. No, no, never had any girls from there. 00.17.22 Sue Lloyd Roberts No Latvians, no Lithuanians? 00.17.23 Mr Foley No, never, no. 00.17.25 Sue Lloyd Roberts And they also say that you insisted upon an Aids test. 00.17.28 Mr Foley Oh God no, no. 00.17.31 Sue Lloyd Roberts In the tiny Internet Café, which could barely accommodate the two of us let alone a team of Latvian waitresses, Mr Foley showed me how he’d advertised for a girl on a Euro-job web site. It was here that the agency in Riga could have picked up the names of bona-fide employers, it could then use the names without the knowledge of their owners to get work permits. But why? 00.17.57 Music 00.18.03 Sue Lloyd Roberts There’s no doubt that there are foreign workers in Ireland. The Republic, which is enjoying an economic boom, has given work permits to ten thousand foreign nationals so far this year – among them a thousand Latvians. But where are they? 00.18.19 Music 00.18.27 Sue Lloyd Roberts The police told me that they’d recently shut down all the brothels in Dublin – including those employing Eastern European girls. We trawled the lap-dancing clubs; there were no Latvians here either. 00.18.41 Sue Lloyd Roberts But from here I’m given an introduction to a man who, of all people I’m assured, would know where the burger bar and the Latvian girls fit in. 00.18.58 Sue Lloyd Roberts Seamus has had dealings with sex traffickers and is prepared to talk if we disguise his identity and his voice. 00.19.10 Aston Actor’s voice 00.19.10 Seamus It does make sense that someone is using a front agency here in Ireland to bring Latvian girls in here, ostensibly on work permits for the service industry or whatever. The government’s now handling hundreds and thousands of work permits every month and it’s a new game to them and it would never occur to them that someone could be abusing the system. 00.19.30 Seamus From here the sex trafficker can take advantage of the free movement between the Republic and Britain to fulfil the vice requirements in London, Birmingham, Manchester and other cities in Britain. I’ve heard that fifty to a hundred Latvian women, three hundred foreign women in all, have got through on that route. 00.19.47 Sue Lloyd Roberts He goes on to name the individuals who ship girls from Dublin to the United Kingdom. Some of them currently face charges in the Irish Republic. He describes their tactics. 00.20.06 Aston Actor’s voice 00.20.06 Seamus The agent confiscates their passports immediately. If the girls want their passports returned they have to pay ten, twenty thousand pounds and the only way they’re going to get that money is to go along and work in the vice trade. So they’re effectively prisoners for as long as the pimps want them. 00.20.28 Sue Lloyd Roberts Most of the girls working in the sex industry in Britain are foreign, many of them illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe. And in response to demand the sex trafficking business here is growing. 00.20.47 Aston Metropolitan Police footage 00.20.50 Sue Lloyd Roberts From their raids on saunas and massage parlours police believe that hundreds of girls are being held in Britain as sex slaves. Raids like these result in deportations but few convictions. 00.21.03 Sue Lloyd Roberts The girls are terrorised by the traffickers with threats to their families back home. And they’re reluctant to testify against them. And they’re seldom given the chance. They’re invariably deported as illegals and not treated as victims or valuable witnesses. 00.21.21 Sue Lloyd Roberts What are the advantages for the pimps of employing foreign nationals? 00.21.26 Aston Actor’s voice 00.21.26 Seamus People who go to brothels always like something different. They’ll always go for foreign women. If you can find foreign, vulnerable women so much the better from the vice man’s point of view. 00.21.38 Sue Lloyd Roberts We have no evidence that the agency in Riga is involved in a conspiracy but it is clearly negligent in planning to send two young girls to a place where they’re not expected. 00.21.50 Sue Lloyd Roberts I went back to ask the boss there why they’d misled the girls and us. 00.21.57 Sue Lloyd Roberts You told us that Mr Con Foley already employed Latvians and Lithuanians in Ireland - we found there were no Latvians or Lithuanians there. You told us he had a hotel, a restaurant, Internet café which badly needed workers – we found that he was advertising for one worker at the most. You told us that he asked for an Aids test or somebody asked for an Aids test and yet you could not find the document and now you say; oh maybe it was unofficially asked for. Why so many lies? 00.22.26 Agency Owner Subtitles If you have no more questions, the door is over there. I don’t want to see you anymore. Show me one person whom I sold as a prostitute. I can show you 30 people I’ve given jobs to as farmers. 00.22.39 Sue Lloyd Roberts He called on security guards before I could ask why he was now apparently recruiting farmers when before it was hotel domestics. 00.22.48 Sue Lloyd Roberts We all left. It was a firm denial and yet the agency may well find its work curtailed. 00.22.56 Sue Lloyd Roberts The Irish Consul in Riga has also been investigating and is warning employers in Ireland not to deal with these people. 00.23.04 Sue Lloyd Roberts We shall never know what might have happened to Luba and Sveta if they’d gone but they believe they’ve had a narrow escape. 00.23.20 Sveta Voice over It’s been a shock. I wanted to go abroad for a year to learn the language and earn some money to continue my education. I had a life plan and now my future is in tatters – I feel awful. 00.23.40 Luba Voice over I feel terrible. Everything might look nice and rosy but life’s not like that. It’s not all nice and straightforward. You have to remember that there are people out there who don’t wish you well, they just see you as prey - it’s horrible. 00.24.05 Sue Lloyd Roberts For the professional sex workers the rewards are adequate here in Riga but they too have heard that there are even better opportunities abroad. 00.24.18 Sue Lloyd Roberts Reluctantly they attend a talk by Tatiana Kurova who runs the only outreach organisation in the country, which advises prostitutes on the perils of their trade from unprotected sex to trafficking. 00.24.38 Tatiana Kurova Subtitles You’ve probably seen the ads in the papers… with offers of lucrative jobs abroad. Unfortunately, this often ends tragically for young women. 00.24.54 Sue Lloyd Roberts But I suspect that I’m the only one here who’s listening. 00.25.05 Sue Lloyd Roberts Tatiana fears that she’s unlikely to deter the professionals from trying their luck even with the tragic stories she hears from those who do manage to escape back home. 00.25.16 Sue Lloyd Roberts Some of the calls she gets, she says, are scarcely believable. 00.25.26 Aston TATIANA KUROVA Women’s Issues Centre, Latvia Voice over A woman called and said that she’d been in a concentration camp for women somewhere in Poland. There were three hundred women held there. The camp had a fence with barbed wire and was guarded by dogs. Women were starved. Three of them managed to escape. They made their way back to Latvia under cover of the night, avoiding roads and dodging customs and border checks. She had barely crawled here. 00.26.00 Music 00.26.02 Sue Lloyd Roberts The prostitutes of Latvia can be forgiven if they feel confident that they can handle the challenge of working abroad. After all they’ve walked the streets of Riga pulling local and foreign clients at ease and earning about ten dollars a night. But they know they could earn much more. 00.26.22 Music 00.26.29 Sue Lloyd Roberts Irina followed the trail to Israel. 00.26.36 Irina Voice over When we arrived we found out that we wouldn’t work on the percentage but would be paid a salary of a thousand dollars a month. Then they started selling us, they took us all over Israel showing us to the pimps. A pimp was taking me to different buyers for the whole week looking for the best profit. 00.27.02 Sue Lloyd Roberts She was sold to the first pimp for fifteen thousand dollars. To the second for ten thousand. And on each subsequent sale her price was reduced. 00.27.22 Irina Voice over In the end I was sold for seven thousand dollars. On average you would service fifteen clients. Once I serviced thirty-three in a day. It was possible to make twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars a `month. They promised us a thousand dollars monthly salary but we didn’t get a penny. 00.27.44 Sue Lloyd Roberts But Irina says the pimps like the naïve ones best – like Sveta and Luba. Those who think they’re taking a job as a waitress or domestic worker and who are easier to terrorise. She met one in a brothel in Israel. 00.28.06 Irina Voice over She said that she’d found an ad for girls wanted in Israel as au pairs - nothing to do with sex service. She met these people and they promised her an au pair job in Israel for six hundred dollars a month. They promised to find a suitable family and deal with all the travel arrangements quickly. When she arrived in Israel they took her straight to the brothel and they sold her like us. 00.28.46 Irina Voice over I don’t think that she’s been the only one. I think that there are a lot of girls like her who want to go abroad to be an au pair or a dancer and they are duped. 00.29.11 Sue Lloyd Roberts Aija decides to take up the offer of work as a dancer for Club 8 in Denmark. She’s cross-referenced the club on the Internet sex pages and she now expects that she’ll be told to have sex with their clients. 00.29.25 Sue Lloyd Roberts It doesn’t surprise her. She knows of many Latvian girls who’ve been similarly duped and abused by pimps. 00.29.35 Sue Lloyd Roberts Aija too is a professional. Although posing as an innocent, she’s a journalist who’s volunteered to co- operate with us. 00.29.48 Sue Lloyd Roberts It’s an operation, which could earn her dangerous enemies and we must conceal her identity. 00.30.02 Aija Voice over I see it as a mission because I find it very sad that there are so many girls from Latvia and the Baltic States who leave. The social situation makes it impossible to earn any money so they leave tempted by earning prospects. 00.30.23 Sue Lloyd Roberts Do you know there is a risk? 00.30.29 Aija Voice over I understand that there is a risk. Many of the girls who travel to the West to earn money are aware that it is a risky undertaking. Still, they hope that maybe the worst won’t happen and because of that they don’t have any back up and ways of getting out of the situation. They end up in the brothels and in the claws of the pimps – the end result is pitiful. 00.31.08 Sue Lloyd Roberts Aija has bought her ticket for Copenhagen to arrive on the day which her contact at the club, Luna, specified. 00.31.18 Sue Lloyd Roberts We have arranged to follow her the whole way and for bodyguards to meet her and protect her when she arrives in Denmark. 00.31.26 Music 00.31.29 Aston COPENHAGEN, DENMARK 00.31.35 Sue Lloyd Roberts You can understand the attraction of Copenhagen to the young Eastern European. Everyone appears to be having fun – especially the young. For the sex trafficker Copenhagen has always meant good business – a playground for the rich who like to enjoy themselves. 00.31.52 Aston DORIT OTZEN Danish Network Against Trafficking in Women We have had this problem for the last fifteen years starting with few women coming from Thailand. What we have seen for the last couple of years, last five years maybe, are that women from East of Europe are coming in their growing amount. So Denmark is a country, is their destination. 00.32.16 Sue Lloyd Roberts And now Aija’s on her way. She’s been given exact instructions by the club. She’s to pose as a tourist, as a backpacker. She’s ordered, on no account, to mention the name of the club to the immigration authorities and to call Luna when she arrives. 00.32.42 Aija Ah Luna? Luna Yes. 00.32.44 Aija This is Aija again. 00.32.45 Luna For you, what you’ve got to do in Copenhagen, you say you go camping. Aija Ah, aha. 00.32.51 Luna Ok, you just say I go to travel around, I go camping, you know, I come to tourist, you know. 00.32.59 Sue Lloyd Roberts She’s told to take a taxi. For her own safety we don’t give her a recording device so that when she gets to the club on the outskirts of Copenhagen she’s better able to pose as the dancer they’re expecting. A naïve girl who’s scraped together the money to pay her fare and who’s now desperate to start work. 00.33.24 Aija Voice over I asked them what my job would be. They said the sex parties take place here. Further on there’s the sauna. Upstairs everything else takes place. I asked naively; ‘then I’ll have to do that too? Forgive me but I didn’t realise that, I came here only to dance. Then that means I’ll have to have sex with the clients?’ To which they replied; ‘yes, of course’. 00.34.09 Sue Lloyd Roberts Before Aija can set to work, we inform the police. With some reluctance they agree to go to the club. Their only apparent interest is in finding illegal immigrants – girls working in Denmark on tourist visas. 00.34.33 Sue Lloyd Roberts They bring no charges against the club’s managers, although what they find inside confirms Aija’s story. 00.34.45 Policeman It’s a private property, so you can’t come in. 00.34.49 Aston OLE. J. ANDREASEN Deputy Detective Danish Police We made a raid against a sex club here. In the house we found four Hungarian girls, we also found pictures and advertisements which proves that their customers could pay for sex duties from striptease to different kinds of sexual intercourse. 00.35.13 Sue Lloyd Roberts They didn’t ask Aija how she’d got there. She was allowed to go and the four Hungarian girls they’d arrested from the club earlier were deported. 00.35.24 Sue Lloyd Roberts None of them was asked to give evidence against the traffickers. 00.35.31 Aston DORIT OTZEN Danish Network Against Trafficking in Women The police don’t know and don’t want to know anything about trafficking at all and they definitely don’t want to see that it’s going on in front of their own eyes. You can get up to ten years for selling drugs and importing drugs but for selling and exploiting women you get maximum four years. But nobody ever got that in Denmark. 00.35.52 Sue Lloyd Roberts And there’s little prospect of change. We have obtained documents in Copenhagen, which reveal police reluctance to sign the UN convention against sex trafficking. The UK has also not signed it. And like the British, the Danish immigration authorities don’t want to issue the girls with visas to enable them to testify against the traffickers. We mustn’t, they say, reward girls who’ve come to this country to work as prostitutes. 00.36.23 Dorit Otzen Twenty-four hours the women are gone and nothing happens in Denmark and the pimps can just import other women next day, the week after, the month after. Nothing is done. 00.36.35 Sue Lloyd Roberts As it turns out Aija ends up in Copenhagen enjoying the role she’d been instructed to play – a tourist. 00.36.47 Sue Lloyd Roberts Many other Latvian girls have not been that lucky. 00.36.59 Clock chimes 00.37.06 Sue Lloyd Roberts Take Natasha’s adventure. As far as her family in Riga was concerned Natasha had gone to live in Denmark with her Danish boyfriend. 00.37.16 Sue Lloyd Roberts It seemed the realisation of every Latvian mother’s dream – she planned to bring the whole family over. 00.37.23 Clock chimes 00.37.32 Aston EVGENIA PAVLOVA Natasha’s mother Voice over Natasha met a man there, he proposed to her. Before she went there for the last time, she said she would take her son there. She also wanted to take me. 00.37.47 Sue Lloyd Roberts The family waited by the phone for the call to join Natasha but it never came. A neighbour explains why. 00.37.58 Aston JESPER BLIXENKRONE- MØLLER We came home in a taxi-cab and drove up Steinbligersgel (phon). We saw this naked Asian woman running into the streets and she was covered with blood on her legs and staggering around due to the loss of blood. The police arrived shortly and put her into the police car. Suddenly we heard one of the policemen shouting; ‘don’t worry about her, it’s much worse down here’. He had been into the massage parlour and seen the Baltic woman lying there and she was already dead. 00.38.30 Sue Lloyd Roberts It was Natasha. Seduced by the promise of a new life and wealth in western Europe, she had fallen victim to an unscrupulous pimp whose client turned out to be a killer. 00.38.45 Aston JENS NORVANG MADSEN Deputy Detective Danish Police She was wounded by a knife. We have spoken to more than a thousand people. We have the bodies, we have the knife but we haven’t got the motive. And during the case we have spoken to a lot of people who has been around Natalia and they have told us that she had, has been in the business from the beginning in 1999 when she were here for the first time. 00.39.18 Aston EVGENIA PAVLOVA Natasha’s mother Voice over That’s impossible – she wasn’t that kind of person, she couldn’t do this sort of thing. I don’t even know how she ended up there. 00.39.34 Sue Lloyd Roberts Whatever the truth, Evgenia has lost her daughter and little Arturs has lost his mother. 00.39.45 Evgenia Pavlova Voice over I didn’t tell him about her death for a long time. Each time the phone rang he thought it was his mother. 00.40.07 Evgenia Pavlova Voice over Natasha always told me what a great country it was and how nice the people were. She liked it there, she wanted to stay there and make a new life for herself and give her son a future. 00.40.27 Sue Lloyd Roberts Local people in the suburb where Natasha was murdered clubbed together to send the body home so her mother could bury her. 00.40.38 Sue Lloyd Roberts But her death and others known to the police are unlikely to have an impact on the thousands of young women who leave the Baltic States for Denmark. 00.40.50 Sue Lloyd Roberts And back in Copenhagen Club 8 is recovering well. In fact if you’d phoned in only a week after the raid this is what you were offered. 00.40.59 Phone message Subtitles Russian Tina, 22, is a blonde with short hair. She is beautiful and well-shaped, with tight C breasts. Tina welcomes you to the wildest sex experience. 00.41.13 Aston JURIS JASINKEVICS Chief of Interpol, Latvia Voice over Five, six, seven years ago we identified a small number of countries as destinations for Latvian prostitutes. Now they’re even found in Iceland and the number is far larger. I also foresee that the situation will get worse and these crimes will grow. In the last few years girls from the countryside go to Riga, from there to Germany, Holland, Denmark where the number of prostitutes is growing. They’ve even made their way to Great Britain. 00.42.05 Sue Lloyd Roberts But however horrific the stories are which get back to the police and families in Eastern Europe they’re not having any effect. Hope springs eternal for the young, hungry and vulnerable young women of Riga. Sveta may have given up on the agency, which wanted to send her to Ireland but she’s found another. 00.42.30 Sveta Subtitles I am calling about work abroad. Could you tell me which country and what’s the job? Waitress in Spain? Good. Can I take your address so I could come to find out more details? Tomorrow will be fine. 00.43.02 Sue Lloyd Roberts Nothing will stop these girls applying for jobs regardless of where they might lead. 00.43.11 Sue Lloyd Roberts And if they find themselves in situations beyond their control, there are sadly few safeguards around to protect them against this modern and potentially fatal form of slavery. 00.43.25 End Music 00.43.31 Sue Lloyd Roberts For more information on tonight’s programme please visit our web site at: Aston www.bbc.co.uk/correspondent 00.43.31 Credits Reporter SUE LLOYD-ROBERTS Camera JON STAPLETON ANDREW PSARIANOS Graphics NICOLA OWEN VT Editor BOYD NAGLE Dubbing Mixer PHITZ HEARNE Production Team MARTHA ESTCOURT FIONA LAWSON-BAKER DAVID LINES Production Manager JANE WILLEY Unit Manager IRENE OZGA Film Research NICK DODD Research HENRIK BRUN ULRIKKE MOUSTGAARD MAYA POHODNEVA Picture Editor DAVID HOWELL Producer EWA EWART Series Producer FARAH DURRANI 00.43.57 Editor FIONA MURCH © BBC MM 00.44.00 End Correspondent 1 6