Of about 15,000 Russian and Eastern European women working in Germany's red-light districts, many work in brothels, sex clubs, massage parlours and saunas under the financial control of criminal groups from the Russian Federation, Turkey and the former Yugoslavia, the IOM survey states. Asian organized crime groups directly control about 70 per cent of the sex industry in the United States, according to Schiavi. They fall into the trafficking net via advertisements for work as entertainers, models, domestic helpers, kitchen aids or even mail-order brides. Some are led there by friends and acquaintances. Since passports or identity cards may be confiscated or torn up, women live in constant fear of arrest.
Conditions are often unsanitary, with women living and working in the same tiny rooms.
Often, they are kept locked up or physically tortured - sometimes with cigarette burns, knives and electric shocks, according to Human Rights Watch. Often they must work off the steep fees that brothel owners have paid to traffickers. Human Rights Watch recently interviewed 19 women and girls from Myanmar who had been trafficked into Thailand. Some 14 were found to be infected with the dreaded disease. Awareness of AIDS among potential customers has driven the Thai sex industry to seek more and more young girls from remote villages thought to be untouched by the virus.