Clients blind to trafficked women's fate

The man who destroyed "Alicia's" life couldn't have done it without the hundreds of others who were willing to pay him to have sex with her.

She grew up in Uganda, where she was harassed by police and jailed because of her Rwandan ethnic background. Desperate to get out of the country, she met a man who offered to take her to London for 1,000 pounds ($1,975).

He seemed respectable and promised to provide her with documents. She could easily find a job as a receptionist, and could pay him back, he said.

When they arrived in Britain, he took her to an apartment in a row of terraced houses in a south London suburb and locked her inside. She knew nobody.

"He would lock the house and go. I asked myself: even if you left, where would you go? A huge big country. And the only person I know is him," she told Reuters in an interview, asking that a pseudonym be used in place of her name.

"On the fourth day, he came and demanded sex from me. When I refused, he forced himself on me and raped me. Two weeks later, he started bringing in a 'friend'.

"At first I thought they really were friends. And then I realised, they would be in the other room and they would be shouting over money, and I realised there was more to 'friend' than I thought."

Night after night, six or eight men had sex with her while her trafficker collected their money in the next room.

"If you are resisting it becomes hard on you, because they are rough. They manhandle you. I would just go through with it and then it was over."

Her trafficker warned her never to speak about her ordeal. "To me he was like this god. I can get anything through him, as long as I never say what happened in that house."

ESCAPE

Does she think clients understood she was a prisoner?

"I don't think they would have come back. If they really knew. But it's not their concern at the end of the day: you've paid your money, and you got what you are paying for."

She adds: "I think they knew. If you pay your money and you go into a place like this, you have to know. I can't believe how blind people are. How can it go on in such a country?"

One of the men offered her his business card, apparently an offer of help, but she was too scared to take it.

"You always think: if I had been stronger, if I had talked out, if I had screamed to the outside world, maybe they would hear."

Eventually her trafficker began bringing her to a night club, where she was put to work behind the bar. He collected her wages and brought her back to the apartment each night.

She persuaded a customer at the bar to help her escape. The customer met her outside and brought her to his apartment. She thought she was safe, but her trafficker tracked her down and brought her back.

"When we reached home, he really beat me. I think that was the worst time, beating and kicking like you are a piece of furniture."

After 11 months, with little explanation, her captor gave her a fake French passport and set her free. She was caught by police and jailed for possessing the fake document.

She discovered she was infected with HIV and attempted suicide in jail, but now she says she wants to keep fighting.

"My thoughts were: I just wanted to kill myself. But now I am thinking it's worth it to be alive."