Anna says one of them took out his anger on the remaining three girls. At about the same time, she was accused of being a poor earner and told to lift her game. She later told investigators, almost apologetically, that she probably hadn't made as much money as the others because she was the oldest. She claimed at times she was made to work up to 24 hours. In early August, the women were moved into a unit at the Warwick Beach Side Apartments in Beaconsfield Parade, a garish 1960's style apartment block near the heart of St. Kilda's night life.
Residents say the women spoke no English and kept to themselves.
They were very quiet. In mid-September, Anna and the other women were picked up by Immigration Department officers in a raid at the apartment. I was in a foreign country where I couldn't speak the language and was without my passport. She was held behind the high barbed wire fence of the Immigration Department's detention centre in Maidstone. As it turned out, what the fence kept out, phone lines allowed in.