‘I was kidnapped from a London street and sold for sex to married men who wanted a porn-star experience’: The horrifying truth about modern sex slavery

ANA quickens her step as she notices the car crawling along the curb behind her, but it’s too late… a man jumps out and bundles her into the vehicle before speeding off towards the airport.

Now, the nursing student will be trafficked to Ireland against her will where she’ll be viciously beaten, raped and tortured as she’s sold in brothels across the country.

Ana is one of thousands women who are ripped from British streets and forced into sex work by gangs in the UK and Ireland every year.

Once she’s been kidnapped, she’ll be stripped of her glasses, clothing and passport, before being forced to board a plane to Dublin and told that the traffickers will kill her mother if she makes any fuss or tries to escape.

Once there, she’ll be taken to a brothel where men can pay extra to break her teeth, punch her and rip out her hair.

After a few months there, her pimps will move her on to a new brothel to avoid police detection – it’s a vicious cycle which she will be trapped in for decades – and she’s not alone.

Shockingly, there are currently 212 active investigations into modern sex slavery in the UK – and thousands of women like Ana are being kept against their will in ordinary houses on ordinary streets.

A new BBC2 factual drama, Doing Money, has used actors to portray the bleak reality of sexual slavery in Britain via the true story of Ana, a Romanian woman snatched off the streets of London.

Here, Sun Online reveals the horrifying truth of modern sex slavery in Britain.

Married men raping sex slaves in ‘porn-star experience ‘

Last year, a staggering five million girls across the globe were sex trafficked.

Across the UK, it’s estimated that there are tens of thousands of people in the shackles of modern slavery.

Some have been groomed into it – others have been unable to repay debts, robbed of their passports, or threatened with violence against family members.

In December 2017, Leicestershire police found 421 trafficked women in 156 brothels over the course of two years.

In March 2015, Greater Manchester Police identified 324 potential new brothels in “the hotspot areas for modern slavery” within Manchester.

The harrowing BBC2 dramatisation shows with depressing starkness how married men are the ones paying to rape Ana, buying the “porn star experience” or the “girlfriend experience”, and even becoming angry when they don’t believe that a clearly traumatised woman is offering value for money.

These men pay extra to beat and torture Ana and in one scene we see her lying on the bed in tears, her face covered in blood.

Shots of a leafy suburban street in Cork are contrasted with the sounds of a young woman crying out in pain while the man raping her emits pig-like grunts.

Horrifyingly, there’s a spike in business on Thursday nights, when the wives of these men go late night shopping.

‘She looks like a drug addict and her breath smells’

After raping the women, these men go on to leave humiliating reviews online.

One customer accuses her of “lying there like a block of wood” and gives her one star.

Organised crime groups typically advertise women on websites such as Adultwork, where clients or ‘johns’ can leave sick reviews for sex workers – and trafficking victims.

In Doing Money, one of Ana’s violent pimps reads from a review site: “’She’s pretty enough but she looks like a drug addict and her breath smells.’ People read these reviews you know,” to which Ana responds with quiet fury: “My teeth are broken into pieces. Of course my breath smells.”

These degrading reviews reveal the callous attitude of the men who visit pop-up brothels to buy sex.

Sex worker reviews have reportedly been used to bully people offering services into performing acts that they are uncomfortable with on the premise that if they refuse, they will incur a negative online ranking.

Bad reviews can be used to ruin a sex worker’s business and they are often dripping in misogynistic language and insulting comments about the skills and appearances of different sex workers.

‘Hiding in plain sight’

Sandra Horley CBE, Chief Executive of Refuge, told Sun Online: “Ana’s story shows how modern slavery hides in plain sight. She was held and abused on ordinary streets, and in ordinary flats.

“Moreover, it was ‘ordinary’ men exploiting her – they didn’t care that she was enslaved.

“Sadly, modern slavery and sexual exploitation are multinational, billion-dollar industries that thrive on control and fear – to bring these insidious crimes out of the shadows, everybody has a duty to speak up.

“At Refuge, we support women like Ana. It is critical that survivors of modern slavery have access to specially trained advocates who speak their language and understand their experiences.

“We urge anyone at risk of modern slavery to contact Refuge if they need help or support.”

Inadequate policing in cases of modern slavery

There are also questions to be asked regarding how equipped the police are to deal with cases of human trafficking and whether they have the resources to free women and bring perpetrators to justice.

According to a 2017 report, police still have difficulty prosecuting cases of human slavery, largely due to the difficulty of investigations and public lack of sympathy for foreign victims.

A former sex slave known as Jenny was passed around for more than a decade in England after being groomed from the age of 11, and she said that in her case, there were many “missed opportunities by professionals – I could have been saved and rescued earlier”.

The distressing level of coercion and psychological control the pimps and traffickers have over these women is evident.

Neil Wain, International Programme Director at Hope for Justice, and former Assistant Chief Constable at Greater Manchester Police, told Sun Online: “Victims rarely identify as victims, due to the extreme psychological control and manipulation they suffer.

Ana is eventually helped to escape by a local gangster, and she agrees to help a dedicated team with more experience in finding and prosecuting modern slavers, who are increasingly frustrated by their relative powerlessness in a clearly abusive situation.

‘We are everywhere’

Brave Ana went on to tell her story to parliament in Belfast, and her testimony helped to pass the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act. This was the first new law against slavery in the UK for nearly 200 years.

The pimps who’d kept her captive were tried in both Sweden and the UK and each went to prison for just three years.

Sex slavery is real, police forces are not always equipped to deal with it, and it could be happening on your street as you go about your daily life, never knowing about the horrors that might be occurring behind closed doors.

As Ana says, “We are everywhere. People only have to look.”