Sex Trafficking

Modern Day Slavery: Sex Trafficking “I was sold for 3,500 euros ($4,400). I was beaten, raped, forced against my will. They would put out cigarette butts on me and cut me with razors. It was like a horror movie” (Kara 131). This first-hand account comes from Martina, a 29-year-old sex trafficking victim from Bulgaria. At the time she was 19 and working as cook. She met a young man who offered her a job at a restaurant in Croatia. Desperate for a better life, Martina took the job without a second thought. Martina continues her story with, “As soon as I arrived and as soon as he brought me to his apartment, everything started. He told me there was no work and that I had crossed the border in order to work as a prostitute. I tried to fight back but I was no match for him physically. He beat and raped me constantly for three days, to the point where I was lying in blood and urine while tied to a bed” (Kara 132). Martina was locked in the apartment for two months, where she was beaten and raped daily until she was “broken” and had become a sexual slave. Then, the man who had taken her took her out to the streets. This horrifying story is merely one snapshot of the estimated 1 million women globally that are victims of sex trafficking every year. Soroptimist, an international volunteer organization working to improve the lives of women and girls, defines sex trafficking as “The exploitation of women and children across international borders, for the purposes of forced sex work” (Horen). In the past decade it has become the fastest growing criminal industry in the world (Lindstrome 45). Kira Cochrane, a writer for the New Statesmen, states in her article, “The trafficking of women is the world’s most lucrative trade for the global black market” (22). Most often the women suffer similarly to Martina; they are promised jobs in another country, sold for the equivalent of two to four thousand dollars, and then forced to perform sex under the threat of extreme violence. It

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