These are external links and will open in a new window. An organised criminal gang of four men and a woman have been convicted of trafficking more than 50 Hungarian women in their teens and 20s into the UK, setting them up in brothels and hotels across the south-east of England as prostitutes.
Scores of vulnerable women were recruited from the poverty-stricken streets of rural Hungary before being trafficked to the UK. One of them was Leila Anotoni, who was advertised as "fresh meat" on a website advertising sexual services for sale and flown to England with the understanding she would be working in a massage parlour.
Instead she said she was confined to hotel rooms in Brighton, Gatwick and across Kent, effectively kept as a sex slave. She said in one day she could see up to five men, but she was unable to leave England as her passport had been taken and she had no money. Mate Puskas, 25; Zoltan Mohacsi, 36; Istvan Toth, 34; his brother Peter Toth, 28, and Victoria Brown, 25, denied conspiracy to control prostitutes and trafficking for sexual exploitation.
Their trial at Hove Crown Court heard how Brown collected the money Leila earned, while Puskas controlled and exploited her. Another tactic was for threats to be made against them and their families, and to expose the work they were doing in the UK in their home country. A mother with six daughters told me many teenage girls had left her neighbourhood to work overseas as prostitutes. It is the promise of a better life overseas which lured many of the young women from rural Hungarian villages into the clutches of people traffickers.
Those I spoke to said it was poverty and lack of job opportunities which were the causes of prostitution. Leila has now returned to college, but many like her continue to come to the UK - trafficked by criminals who exploit, control and degrade them for financial gain.
