Anita Gradin, the European Union’s commissioner for Justice and Immigration, said Monday that Eastern Europe was replacing Asia, Latin America and Africa as the top source of female sex slaves. “I would say that proportions now are one-third of the women come from developing countries and two-thirds from Eastern Europe,” Gradin estimates. She is seeking U.S. cooperation in fighting the problem, and has asked Hillary Rodham Clinton to warn women about female slavery when she visits Ukraine in November.
Gradin estimated that half a million women are involved in the sex trade each year, with two-thirds coming from Eastern Europe and the rest coming from developing countries. “Young girls from countries such as Poland are promised good-paying jobs in the West in restaurants and beaty parlors, their papers are taken away and then they are forced” into the sex trade, she said.
