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טסרקובמ ודר ןאיטסירק לופ יאנותיעה תאמ דחוימ ח"וד
- ב 2003 ראויב םסרופש
IPWR - Institute for War & Peace Reporting

IWPR SPECIAL REPORT - FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT: HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN ROMANIA.
Paul Christian Radu reports from Bucharest.

Freedom at Midnight: Human Trafficking in Romania

Undercover investigation reveals how young girls are being beaten, abused
and sold for a few hundred of dollars in Bucharest's back streets.

By Paul Cristian Radu in Bucharest

"Can I be sure you're not giving me back to them?" Diana whispered from the backseat of
the car. "I'm scared."

The trembling figure, huddled in a blanket against a cold Bucharest night, had only minutes
earlier been just one of the legion of girls for sale in Romania's human-trafficking market.
Driven by fear, her words tumbled out, "They hit me. He stabbed me with a knife. You want to
see the wound? I'm hungry. Do you like me? You want sex with me?
Can I have your kids afterwards?

"I'll be a good wife. Do you want to marry me? You know, they starved me. Do you want me to
take off my blouse? I need to eat something! Promise I will never be starved ever again?
I want to smoke, too. And don't forget to buy me chocolate."

Diana - her name has been changed for the purposes of this story - cost us 400 US dollars.
As part of a joint investigation by IWPR and the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism,
RCIJ, we had just purchased her from a trafficker. A few days before, she had passed New Years
Eve chained and freezing in a dog cage.

Now she was on the way to a shelter for victims of the sex slave trade. She could scarcely
believe it - from a life of terror she was headed for a hot meal, warm bed, long bath and
some human understanding, plus a chance for a new life.

Plucking Diana so dramatically from one world to another was the culmination of an extended
investigation into the crime of forced prostitution and human trafficking in Romania.
Driven in many cases by dire financial need, young women, such as Diana, are coerced into
nightmare lives - tormented and tortured in Romania and sometimes sold on to indentured
lives abroad in countries where they cannot speak the language or find any help. Only the
extent of the crime compelled us as journalists to cross the line, rescue one of the victims
and, in so doing, provide first hand evidence of the brutal trade.

Diana is also mentally retarded. She can't read or write and suffers from what is termed
the "street kids' syndrome" - not knowing when to stop eating. Before she was handed over
to a women's shelter, she consumed three Big Macs, two chocolate bars, three large sodas
and then asked for more. But a few days on from her escape, her wounds - at least on the
outside - were healing.

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