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Forces of modernization have accelerated the resurgence of this "new slavery," as Bales calls it. The dramatic increase in world population, tripling since 1945 (from about 2 to 6 billion), has overwhelmed some developing countries. Rampant unemployment and underemployment give rise to masses of desperate people, producing what Bales calls "a glut of potential slaves."

"Sending" countries supply women and children. Trafficking flourishes, notably, in regions with the greatest population growth: Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Africa and the Arab world. Rapid social and economic change has meant that poverty has worsened for the underclass while the gap between rich and poor has widened. Women and children in economically desperate situations easily fall prey to tricks of traffickers.

They are then moved to "transit" countries—Mexico and Canada, for example, where they can more easily slip illegally into "receiving" countries like the United States, though Mexico and Canada do their own share of sending and receiving respectively.

The U.S., Germany, and Italy are the top three destination countries, with the Netherlands and Japan close behind. According to one report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (May 2003), receiving countries are typically developed nations.

An estimated 45,000 to 50,000 foreign women and children cross the U.S. borders each year as fodder for sex trafficking. A layer down, intrastate domestic trafficking networks trade 300,000 to a million each year, according to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. (The fluid and secretive nature of the trade makes it hard to pin down more specific numbers, CMEC explains.) Domestically or internationally, the script is the same: desperate women are lured with false promises. In the U.S., for example, they are promised work as an au pair or a secretary, a waitress or a maid. But when they arrive at their destinations, the jobs aren't there. They end up in massage parlors, escort services, and dance clubs. They are told they must pay the expenses incurred in finding a job: transportation, rent, food. But in order to earn their keep, the women and children are forced to sell their bodies—at least "temporarily," they are told. But their so-called expenses outpace their income, and victims find it almost impossible to buy themselves out of their captors' clutches (see "Finding the 'Real God,' " below).

Take the case of Heidi, 41, who endured ten years of sex slavery. She grew up in church and was a virgin when she graduated from high school. In college, she experimented with alcohol and became estranged from her strict churchgoing parents. Feeling like a failure, she latched on to a seemingly helpful man who approached her with promises. He said he'd be her "daddy."

"He took time enough to be my boyfriend, then sent me out on the Midwest circuit," she says. This meant she was carted around for weekly stints in strip clubs, forced to live out of rank hotels in small towns all over the Midwest. Her "daddy" and a few of his friends had beaten and raped her a few times, and forced her to take addictive drugs. At the strip club, when she refused raunchy requests, they pelted her with empty shotgun shells. On another occasion a man attacked her while she was on a stage.

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November 2003, Vol. 47, No. 11