Minutes later, we met Diana inside Buric's house. She was on sale.
"The competition is so tough lately. They are bringing in beautiful girls from Ukraine and
I'm losing my business," Buric's wife complained to Dwarf. She was carrying a baby in her
arms. "Nobody wants my girls anymore. They'd rather pay extra and go with those long-legged
girls. We're living hard times."
She talked very openly, as Dwarf explained that I was a good friend and that he wanted to buy
the girl for himself.
"OK, Dwarf, do you want her or not?" the woman asked, pushing Diana forwards into the light.
She looked about 16 but the woman insisted she was 19. "She's not sick. The only thing is
that she eats too much. She always asks for food," Buric's wife added.
We returned to the car, took some of the money and Dwarf paid the woman for Diana.
The temperature outside was minus five degrees Celsius and the girl was wearing only a thin
skirt, high heels and no socks.
"Please give her a jacket or something. It's too cold outside for her," I told the woman
who was counting her money after handing the baby to Dwarf.
"We don't have any other clothes for her. Don't you see we are poor? She won't die. She's
used to cold," the woman replied without even a glance. Happy with the money she had got,
she told us she could sell us some other girls, too.
We held Diana's hand going back to the car because the narrow street was covered with
ice and she was stumbling in her high heels. She was confused and kept asking us what we
were going to do with her. Dwarf assured her that she was going to be OK and that "her
stars had just changed".
We left the grateful trafficker in front of the railway station after he counted his money
on our hidden camera. With the money in his hands he seemed relieved.
"Wow. Good. Good business. I was so afraid I'd be arrested. Give me your phone number and
I'll call you when I have another girl on sale," he said. We declined and headed off.
GIMME SHELTER
In the car, Diana burst into conversation. "Are you sure you're not giving
me back to Buric? Who's going to marry me? Buric and his wife beat me, " she said. " He cut
me with a knife. He kept me in the dog kennel on New Year's Eve. They forced me in there
naked and it was so cold. I don't want to return there. Ever. Why did he turn this way?
You're driving back to Buric. I'm scared. Please, don't give me back."
Diana continued to voice her fears throughout the one-hour journey to the women's refuge
in Pitesti. She was so confused that she couldn't believe she was on her way to a shelter
where she would be taken care of. Sitting in the back seat, she offered the one thing she
was forced to surrender continually while in the traffickers' hands: sex.
She couldn't believe her eyes when we stopped at a petrol station and bought chocolate,
sodas and cigarettes. She didn't even smoke but wanted to see if we would buy her everything
she asked. I knew she did not smoke when she asked me to buy a cigarette brand that had
vanished a long time ago. She ate the chocolate in seconds and asked for food.
Finally, we met Iana Matei. It was after midnight. She let Diana finish her Big Mac and
fries before introducing herself. Then we all went to an apartment owned by the shelter
organisation. It would become Diana's home, shared with five other girls picked up from
the streets, but - to her delight - including her own bed.
At the shelter, Diana started telling us her story. She had been on the streets for
years since disaster struck her family in Timisoara, in western Romania and she was
separated from her brother and parents. While working as a prostitute, a client had
promised to marry her.
"But he never came back. I don't know why. I wanted to take care of him. I want to wash
for my man. I want to cook for him. And I want six children. Twins." Diana said, while
showing us the wounds from the chain with which she was beaten.
The shelter director explained that her story could be exaggerated. "It's normal that
she would lie. Everybody lied to her and took advantage of her. Why would she even
believe me when I tell her I want to help her?" Iana asked.
"Lots of people told her the same thing and they didn't keep their promises. I do
believe what she said the pimps did to her. The chain wounds are there. In my experience,
these girl only lie about their identity and background, not about what happened while
being forced into prostitution," she said.
Diana is one of the toughest cases the shelter has handled. "She doesn't know to read
or write. I cannot put her in a school. She never went to school in her life. She's also
mentally retarded so we're looking for a programme for children with special needs,"
Iana said. The organization is continuing to search for an appropriate full-time
programme to care for her needs, while also working with the Timisoara police to
try to track down her real identity.
The scale of human trafficking is immense. A recent OSCE-sponsored meeting in Skopje,
Macedonia, heard how an estimated 200,000 women in the Balkans are victims of human
trafficking each year, with the US State Department itself estimating last year that
between 700,000 and four million individuals were bought, sold, transported and held
against their will worldwide.
According to its latest Trafficking in Persons Report, published in June last year,
the State Department found that while the Romanian government has improved its efforts to
combat the cross-border crime "it still does not yet fully comply with minimum standards
for the elimination of trafficking".
It notes that Bucharest's efforts to investigate and prosecute public officials involved
in trafficking "remain limited". And according to a Human Watch Report last year
on Romania, the government's response to both domestic violence against women and
trafficking was "inadequate".
For now, Diana is doing well at the shelter. She's helping the other girls with the
cleaning and the cooking. Her case has not been solved entirely, but for the first time
perhaps in years she is at last safe from abuse and is not being traded as if sh
e were an animal.
Paul Cristian Radu is a member of the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism
and coordinator of an ongoing IWPR investigative report on human trafficking across
eight countries in the region.
