Sex Trafficking in the UK
Via the Observer
Sex trafficking in the UK: one woman's horrific story of kidnap, rape, beatings and prostitution
Marinela Badea was a 17-year-old student in Romania when she was forced from her home and plunged into a nightmare of brutal sex crimes
When police turned up at the Shangri-La, it was quiet. Marinela Badea was catching up on sleep and was awoken by the commotion. Minutes later, on a grey Manchester morning, she and half a dozen other women were handcuffed and marched out of the red-brick massage parlour in Openshaw in the east of the city.
Marinela, 17, was terrified. Trafficked from Romania, she had been coerced into prostitution by a pimp who beat her with numbing regularity. Now there was something new to fear. "I didn't even know where I was going," she says now. "I couldn't trust anyone, I had no idea of the law. I was so scared."
