BEATEN, RAPED, TORTURED AND STARVED: THE SHOCKING FATE OF EASTERN EUROPEAN SEX TRAFFICKING VICTIMS REVEALED AS MANY AS 25,000 MOLDOVANS FALL PREY TO TRAFFICKING GANGS EACH YEAR

Of those, 42% are thought to be children according to the IMO
Author Stela Brinzeanu met trafficking victims while researching new novel
Bessarabian Nights follows two friends as they hunt for a trafficked girl.

Victoria avoids all eye contact. Her gaze alternates between boring into the ground and scouring the horizon out the window. Her right foot taps nervously on the wooden floor.
She is one of the 300 female trafficking victims helped each year at the crisis intervention centre run by the International Organisation for Migration in the Moldovan capital, Chisinau.
Her story is shocking. 'A childhood friend told me she worked in a boutique in Dubai and could help me get a similar job,' she explains. 'She put me in touch with a guy who arranged my trip to Odessa [in Ukraine] and onward from Kiev to Dubai.