Sex slaves hidden victims in trade

There's a certain vicious logic employed by traffickers who run human cargoes - many destined to be enslaved as prostitutes - into the United States. Some of the time you can hide your victims in plain sight.

Thousands of women are ferried across the US-Mexican border into one of the world's most lucrative slave markets. But unlike their counterparts in the 18th-century slave trade, none wear chains.

Indeed, some believe they will soon embrace the American Dream.

To US officials, such hopefuls are often indistinguishable from the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who try to cross the border every day.

But instead of legitimate work, the traffickers' victims are prostituted as sex slaves in a dark and savage American nightmare.

Unlike the open slavery practised in the past, the victims of modern bondage live in a shadowy world where threats of violence guarantee their silence and protect their oppressors from legal retribution.

"If you get caught with guns and drugs you'll get a long prison term," says Rick Castro, a deputy sheriff with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department and a veteran of the war against modern slavers.

"But if you're a trafficker you've already told your victims that if they talk to the cops they'll be killed or raped. Or their family members back home will be killed. So there's less chance of being caught."

Little wonder that many victims keep quiet. Only 100 or so human trafficking cases have made it into US courts.

Yet trafficking is at epidemic proportions ranking behind drugs and weapons smuggling among the world's most profitable crimes.

The actual number of US slaves (forced to work without pay as farm workers, domestic servants and prostitutes) is unknown. The State Department estimates that between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the US each year, far lower than some calculations.

"Maybe half that annual number, or more, become sex slaves," says Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves, a Washington-based non-governmental organisation. "It's a very hidden crime. And it's one in which the crime is not an event, like a mugging reported to the police, but a process."

Bales estimates that 27 million people are enslaved worldwide.

In France some 90 per cent of female prostitutes are believed to be trafficking victims. Bales estimates that up to 250,000 slaves exist in the US. "The basic rule of trafficking is that people move from poorer to richer countries," he says.

Many victims come from Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America. But the trade is pervasive. Women are traded from, say, Mali to Ghana, and from Ghana to Nigeria, then from Nigeria to Italy.

While some victims are smuggled across borders, others travel on legal visas or as mail-order brides. Lured by promises of a better life, some even buy their own tickets. Many naively believe they will pay off the cost of travel expenses in a few months.

The reality is grimly different. Forbidden to speak to one another, often moved, denied medical attention - thus helping to spread sexually transmitted diseases with serious consequences for public health - forced to watch girls who try to escape being beaten or raped, and made to perform repeated sex acts, victims live almost unbearable lives.

In a chilling twist, older slaves sometimes recruit fresh girls who see the women as trustworthy.

Meanwhile, countless victims await rescue in the US and elsewhere.

"A lot are forgotten," says deputy sheriff Castro. "After years of abuse they almost forget who they are. They become numb and zombie-like. These girls are raped 20 to 30 times a day. Every day for years."

Perhaps because of its dark history as a slave nation, the US has taken the lead in shaming offenders. Last year the US State Department cited New Zealand as a destination for Chinese "debt slaves" and for the "internal trafficking" of 145 prostitutes 15-years-old or younger.

Yet, there is also a sense that - given America's role as a top destination country - not enough has been done at home.

In part, this is because of widespread public ignorance that such a problem exists, a problem often compounded by poor policing that mistakes slavery for prostitution or illegal migration, with victims likely to be fined or deported.

BUT the problem is obvious to Marisa Ugarte, director of San Diego's Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition, which has helped to rehabilitate 16 victims - from Korea, the Philippines, Mexico and Guatemala - in the past three months.

"The problem is serious," she says. "Especially the widespread denial that it exists. Law enforcement needs more people on this issue." She says wryly that many Americans "think the rest of the world has a problem and that nothing is happening in our back yard."

Building cases is hard, not least because many victims are too frightened to testify.

"Victims fear law enforcement most of all because traffickers often tell them police will beat, rape or deport them," says Assistant US Attorney Heidi Rummel, who works for the Justice Department in LA.

"As many victims come from nations where police are corrupt this is often very believable."

Still, change is in the air. The 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act crucially decriminalised victims. Prosecutors compare the act to a 1984 law that penalised domestic violence.

A three-level "tier" system gauges efforts by foreign nations to fight the trade, prosecute traffickers and aid victims. New Zealand has the best classification. In the US police are being trained to identify slaves and catch traffickers in investigations. (Undercover work is often most effective.)

Rescue groups across the US work to rehabilitate physically and psychologically traumatised women, while toll-free, international hotlines in the US, the EU, Russia and other regions to receive calls from victims and their families.

Slavery is a demand-driven crime. And like the decades old "war on drugs" it will be hard to win as long as men pay for sex with terrified young women.

Ultimately, it may be necessary to punish the customers as well as those who profit from this loathsome trade.