I just watched a PBS Frontline documentary, “Sex Slaves,” which provides a much-needed look at a global trade that snares hundreds of thousands of women around the world. The documentary is incredibly engrossing, centered around the story of a husband searching for his pregnant wife, Katia, a Moldovan woman who was sold into slavery by an acquaintance while traveling in Turkey. Katia and many other women from impoverished countries are duped with offers of legitimate work, kidnapped, and held against their will. They are typically forced to have sex with eight to 15 men a day and beaten regularly. (This kind of sex trade does not just happen in far-off lands: About 20-25,000 of these women have ended up in the United States, says one expert interviewed in the documentary.) Another former sex slave, Tania, from Ukraine, went to Turkey in the hope of getting a nanny job; she was sold to a violent pimp and worked as a prostitute for 10 weeks under the threat of violence until a customer bought her freedom. “Before this, I hadn’t encountered much evil in my life,” Tania says. “But when I got there I couldn’t believe places like that actually exist in this world. I thought I’d find at least one kind person, or that one of those pimps would set me free.” In Turkey, the police officers collude with sex traffickers; some are even customers.

The scariest thing is that Tania chooses to go back to her life as a prostitute. Her family lives in utter poverty in Chernobyl, Ukraine; they cannot afford surgery for Tania’s severely ill younger brother. Shortly after winning her freedom, Tania decides to return to Turkey and sell herself — this time willingly — to raise the money. It may seem like a story taken from a dreary historical novel like Memoirs of a Geisha or Les Misérables, but this is the reality for hundreds of thousands of women, trapped in a modern-day nightmare where poverty and lawlessness meet human lust and cruelty.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen