“I was told by an acquaintance to work at his restaurant in Japan. I decided to accept his offer as I thought my family might improve their life if I sent them my salary. Soon after my arrival in Japan, I realized that I was sold. My life since then has been like that of an animal.

"I was born in 1985 in a village in southwest Albania. My biological parents had divorced several months before I was born. Being unable to raise me, my father took my sister who was four, and my mother took me to an orphanage where I stayed until I was four years old. After that, my mother married another man who had four other children and gave birth to another child, my second sister. This second marriage lasted only two years. Again my mother took the only child she had with her and went to live with another man who had no children of his own. This time she decided to take me out of the orphanage.

She sits unmoving, her head down, as she describes the 1995 rebel attack on her village when she was 13. She has the flat manner and voice of one who is severely depressed. Just once, tears slide down her cheeks, but she appears not to notice them.

“It was late afternoon,” she says in a monotone. “I was washing dishes at the river with six other girls. We tried to run, but they caught us. Three girls resisted. To punish them, the rebels cut off their ears. They knifed out their eyes. Then they killed them. I was so afraid, I couldn’t move. They said if we struggled, they would kill us too. They raped us. They held me down. It was the first time I had sex.” 

"My friend told me that we could earn money by doing trade in Dubai. I sold my house to get money for the trip and to buy some stuff from Dubai to sell in Armenia. I had done the same before, in Turkey. This time I was cheated. We travelled with my friend. Her friend from Dubai sent us an invitation. When we came to Dubai we were immediately taken to a hotel. Our friend who was married to a local Arab man told us that they had sent us the invitation not for shopping but for doing sex work. 

"Before I came to the United States, I lived in a small town near Veracruz, Mexico. I helped support my family by working in the fields, harvesting lemons. Although I did not mind the work, I wished I could earn more money to help my family.

Sometime in 1997, a woman named Maria Elena approached me and told me about opportunities for work in the United States.

"In 1981, I became a statistic: I became a runaway teen, escaping sexual and physical abuse. When I ran away, I no longer had a place to live with my parents nor did I have a living relative who would take me in. Filled with a sense of bravado, invincibility and bravery, I left, figuring that my life couldn't be in any more jeopardy than it already was at what I'd called home. In leaving I hoped there would be no more broken bones, no more sexual abuse, no more rationalizations of molestation and cruelty.

Kala grew up in West Bengal, and was married off by her family at the age of 12. Her new husband was twice her age. Within weeks she ran away to live with a great aunt, seeking refuge from her husband's sexual violence. She was forcibly returned to her husband, and suffered the drudgery of domestic servitude by day and sexual torture by night.

Katya, with a two-year-old daughter and a failing marriage in the Czech Republic, followed the advice of a “friend” that she could make good money as a waitress in the Netherlands. A Czech trafficker drove her along with four other young women to Amsterdam where, joined by a Dutch trafficker, Katya was taken to a brothel. After saying “I will not do this,” she was told, “Yes you will if you want your daughter back in the Czech Republic to live.”