This is a book that will make you shocked, it will make you angry, and it will make you cry. But above all, it will make visible to you one of the greatest evils of our time, and hopefully give you the will to make a difference.
The Natashas is a very painful book to read. At the same time it is a book all of us MUST read. Mr. Malarek, one of our best investigative journalists gives a complete picture of the horror of sex trafficking, in particular, the recently booming sex trade of Eastern European women & children. To be precise in all respects, it is a book about the slavery of our time, brutal, murderous, heartbreaking enslavement of women and children within the very border of the western world.
With first hand information through personal interviews and field investigations, Mr. Malarek illustrates and analyses the nature of this human misery. But above all, he gives us a picture of the horrors these girls suffer: ”Recruited” by deception, coercion, or abduction, 200,000 girls each year from Eastern Europe are sold like cattle abroad to serve as sex slaves. They are tortured and threatened into submission. They are forced to take 10-30 clients a day. Many of them commit suicide, or become mentally sick, still more contract sexually transmitted diseases, have forced abortions, or babies who become orphans. Rarely do they escape their fate because they are invisible to us. Their owners make sure they blend into the local sex business environment, because they don’t speak the local languages, because policemen and politicians don’t care enough, because men who buy sex don’t care (or know) the crime they are paying to propagate, and most of all, because the public is not aware of it and many of us despise them.
This book is not about prostitution. It is about slavery. I thought I knew the subject until I read it, and I am glad I did.
This crime must be stopped. We must all learn about the nature of this problem and pursue to engage ourselves, our government, our law enforcement agencies, and our social sector to deal with it. And if you read this book, I promise that you will feel the same.
