Family and community fail Romanian sex slave

BUCHAREST- (AP)-Maria was arrested frequently after she was forced into prostitution at the age of 13 in a small Romanian town near the Bulgarian border.

But police never took her off the streets.

Her captors, a family of Turkish-Romanian traffickers run by a woman nicknamed 'Babushka', usually paid Maria's fine or greased palms and she was quickly released back to a grim life as a sex slave, she said.

"One day they didn't pay and I was sentenced to community service. So 'Babushka' gave flowers to someone in town hall and the issue was solved," said Maria.

"I was back on the street." Now 20-years-old, Maria spoke to Reuters at a women's shelter where she works as a night guard. She asked that her real name be withheld due to fears her former captors might track her down.

Tales of corruption and abandonment such as Maria's are frequent in Romania and Bulgaria, which will join the European Union in January.

Both states struggle with gangs trafficking thousands of people, mostly women, to work as sex slaves in Western Europe.

Aid workers blame poverty, corruption, failing justice systems and the Balkan duo's geographical location -- along numerous illegal trade routes that criss-cross the Black Sea region -- for fuelling the burgeoning sex industry.

But victims say communities are at fault, too. The region's traditional societies often blame women for their plight and social problems are widespread after decades spent under some of the Soviet bloc's most repressive regimes.

"Everyone is to blame," said Maria, who takes evening classes to bridge a four-year gap in her education, resulting from her years as a prostitute. She wants to become a psychologist.

"I ran away from home but no one came after me. My parents shouldn't have argued so much, my school should have told the police I didn't go to classes. The police arrested me but did nothing to help me," she said.

Her parents made no effort to rescue her, and an aunt who tried to help her gave up when 'Babushka' threatened to kidnap her teenage daughter and force her into prostitution as well.

After working the streets of her small town in Romania for some two years with all her earnings kept by 'Babushka', Maria was sent to Turkey and later Spain.

She remembers the three-day bus journey to Spain, during which the 15-year-old and a dozen other girls were forbidden from speaking to other passengers for fear the purpose of their trip might be discovered.

"We couldn't talk," she said, adding that she saw the trafficker escorting the group give money to border guards. Her passport was forged to show her age as 19, old enough to travel outside Romania without parental consent.

In Spain, after several suicide attempts, a client helped Maria escape. She made her way home but was soon kidnapped on the streets of her Romanian town.

"'Babushka' wanted to send me to Turkey again but the police knew my name there, so they (her captors) paid a guy $50 to marry me."

Maria contacted her Spanish friend, who turned to an organisation that helps trafficked girls in southern Romania. Its chief drove to Maria's town and whisked her off the streets and to safety in a shelter in a far away town. "If I survived this, I can survive anything," said Maria.