Maybe Ashcroft is working in Eastern Europe too ... seems I've seen ads for this agency ...

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Czech and Slovak police have charged 25 people with running an internet-based global prostitution ring using 230 women, many of whom were forced into selling their bodies for sex, officials said on Wednesday.

 

The group posed as the Eli modeling agency, luring girls with promises of work as hostesses at events round the world, but then forcing them into prostitution, Slovak Police First Vice-President Jaroslav Spisiak told Reuters.


"They were invited to castings, where they had pictures taken, mostly in underwear or naked -- then they were gradually told that they will have to offer sex if the client wants," Spisiak said.


The girls were offered over the internet and spent up to a week with clients wherever they requested them, including Japan, western Europe, the United States and the United Arab Emirates.


The agency, based in Nitra, northeast of Bratislava, with a branch in the Czech Republic, made between 10 million and 30 million Slovak crowns a month, Spisiak said.


"If the girls refused ... the agency told them they must pay at least 50,000 Slovak crowns ($1,500) for services, pictures, or at least work to pay off the cost," he said, adding that some of the women had become prostitutes without coercion.

probably want to clean up a bit their reputations and blunt the criticism they received from other countries.

It might be worthwhile to reread the NRO article I linked on 5/11 - Czech Republic proposes a Dutch solution to sex trafficking: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/hughes200405110833.asp .

Obviously an article written by woman who probably never get laid Legalizing sex is a best thing in many ways. In sense that it bring some sort of control to the business and industry and the goverment know on what goes on to certain extent...

One does wonder how the Mafia is keeping all the girls who work in the USA in slavery?  Those Italians sure are meanies.

Literally millions of women from the Former Soviet Union have been sold into sex slavery.  There are so many in Turkey and Israel that the slang for "prostitute" is now "Natasha".

Some were lured with promises of work, others were basically kidnapped.  They keep the girls by taking all their identification.  The girls are told they must "work off their debt" to get a ticket back home.

Their keepers act as "kryshas" - protection from the local authorities.  If the girls go to the police - even in more civil countries like France - they are beaten and raped by the police and returned to the street, which usually means their former kryshas will kill them for disloyalty.

About the only way "out" is to find a more powerful krysha - if a girl can find a crime figure higher in the food chain than her current krysha she might be able to move from Turkey to Canada.

Eventually some do make it back to Russia, but probably not many.
It is really a very sad situation.