 | | | | |  | |  | Eastern European girls are often threatened with violence by sex traffickers |  | | |  |
| | | | | The sex trade:
Maria's story
Maria is from Moldova. Like many other young people in this poor country she dreamed of a better life, a job, perhaps in Italy.
She found a woman who arranged everything and then got a message that it was time to leave. "I just left with no dresses, no money and no luggage. It was already cold. And then when I reached Romania and started to understand it was already too late."
The travel agent was a trafficker. Maria was sold from one to another as she travelled on through Yugoslavia to Albania.
"There I met a man with a speedboat," she explained. "We crossed the Adriatic and after a few weeks in Italy he put me on the street."
Guarded all the time, Maria was beaten into submission but couldn't run away. She had no money, no passport and didn't speak Italian.
"He asked me why I was crying and I said because I feel bad. So he continued to beat me and in the end my tears turned to stone and I could not cry any more".
Eventually she did decide to leave and despite her deep suspicion of the police she turned to them for help.
Maria was interviewed for BBC World Service in a safe house in Rome, run by one of the local government funded organisations that helps trafficked girls.
Strict rules on security apply, but the house runs as a community where each girl has her own room and shares the cooking and domestic chores.
Italian law now protects girls like Maria and she can stay and decide on her own future.
"The future means something beautiful," she enthused.
"This is the first time in my life that I can think about work, a house, I would like to learn computers. I have never had the opportunity in my life to think like this."
Maria speaks to her family on the phone - but they don't know her story. So what drove her to take that fateful decision to leave?
Because in Moldova, she said, women have no value, no dignity. Now she can see the problem.
"No one should think like that. Women should see themselves as human beings, with dignity." | | 
15% of all men have visited a prostitute | |
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