"When I was a senior in high school here in Tirana, I met a boy who did not go to my school. He was kind, attractive, and treated me well. After a time, we fell in love with each other -- or so I thought at the time. He was my 'first love,' and I hadn't had much experience with boys romantically prior to that.

From her home in an impoverished village in rural Bolivia, the prospect of quick riches as an escort girl proved impossible to resist for 23-year-old Patricia Suarez.

A neighbor working for a Hong Kong gang suggested the trip, promising the young mother an escape from part-time work as a domestic servant that paid only US $50 (HK $387) a week.

Desperate for money, the former university student left her two-month old baby with her mother and six brothers and sisters—unaware that she was heading for a nightmare trapped in a sleazy underworld.

"In 1995, there were no job opportunities, so I worked on commission selling goods in the street markets for a man named Mr. Asam Abass Mohamed. I had been working for only five days with some other people, when on the sixth day Mr. Mohamed ordered me to stay and guard the goods while everybody else went out. He then offered me some juice with breakfast. I drank it, and afterward lost consciousness.

When I awoke, I had been raped and was locked in a hotel room. I didn’t know where I was. 

A sex slave aged 15 can be bought for as little as 3500 Euros it emerged, after a Romanian girl who had been prostituted across Europe escaped her Albanian captors while working in a sauna in one European Capital.

Her ''owner" had pocketed up to 1500 Euros a day as he made her work in brothels for up to 20 hours at a time, seven days a week, and beat her if she resisted.

"When I was fourteen, a man came to my parents' house in Veracruz, Mexico and asked me if I was interested in making money in the United States. He said I could make many times as much money doing the same things that I was doing in Mexico. At the time, I was working in a hotel cleaning rooms and I also helped around my house by watching my brothers and sisters. He said I would be in good hands, and would meet many other Mexican girls who had taken advantage of this great opportunity. My parents didn't want me to go, but I persuaded them.

Rosario was the ninth child of twelve in a poor family in Manila. Her mother died when she was nine years old. For awhile, her older brothers and sisters cared for the younger children, but after a few years they were unable to keep their small house, and the children were split up and left to fend for themselves. That is how Rosario ended up on the streets in Manila, scavenging for food. It was there that she met up with Peter, a twelve-year-old who had been on the streets for several years. In addition to begging, he also worked the streets for a local brothel.

"My name is S., and I am seventeen years old. I was born in L., a city in the south of Albania. Four sisters, two brothers, my mother, and my father compose my family. My parents do not work; they used to live by begging in the streets or by the money that one of my sisters as well as one of my brothers sends to them. They are working as illegal immigrants in Greece, I think. We used to change our residence frequently; we never had a real house. We used to live in just one room with the toilet outside.

When I was 14 years old, my family (my father I mean, because he was the one who decided for the family) arranged for me to marry someone who was living in Greece.

My sister, Sally, was a victim of tourists seeking child prostitutes. She was 17 years old in November of 1997, and working in a hotel called Kotu Siarand as a waitress. She happened to meet a Swedish tourist by the hotel pool when he ordered a beer. Sally served him, and he asked her to sit down because he had something to tell her. He told my sister that he and one of his friends were about to open a big five-star hotel in Sweden. He asked if my sister was interested in working in Sweden for more money. He told her that the hotel management would pay all travel costs and find her accommodations. Once she was settled and had begun working, she could pay him back. 

Samuel lived in Eastern Sierra Leone. In 1991, the Civil War started and rebel groups roamed the countryside raiding villages for food. Samuel's family fled to the jungle but the rebels pursued them, demanding food and money. Samuel was abducted by the rebels and trained as a fighter.