On a warm Sunday afternoon, just outside of Rome, I visited one of the safe houses. The old stone villa, with rambling gardens, is owned by the church and occupied by about a dozen girls and an in-house social worker. Downstairs, several girls watch TV, while another two mind a baby. Others prepare pasta for lunch, and fight over lost barrettes, like sisters. Sitting down at a long table over lunch is like being at an international dorm at a college. The young women are from Albania, Romania, the Ukraine, Nigeria and Russia. They're dressed in sloppy Saturday around-the-house sweats, a far cry from the clothes they wore on the streets. The oldest is about 30, and the youngest is 16. They swap stories about their week, and their jobs cleaning houses, assisting at a hairdresser's, or taking classes.

I've come as a friend of one of the social workers, since journalists are not allowed to interview the girls, and so I don't ask them questions about their past. But I've read the case reports.

The tall, beautiful Nigerian girl, Alicia, is proud that she worked for a time as a model, and brags about it. She seems at home in Italy, until, walking around the garden, I realize she can't identify an olive tree. Her one-time boyfriend, who took her to Latin America to model, left her, and she returned to Nigeria. There, another man promised her work in Holland as a model. Instead, they went to Milan, where another couple, upon arrival, took away her passport and told her she owed them $45,000 for her trip and their help finding her work. Told there was no work as a model, she was sent to several cities, and ended up in Naples. She worked every day from 7:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., then was back on the streets from 4:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Her pimp took her money for the debt, and told her she had to pay for food, clothing, rent and other expenses -- meaning it would take years for her to pay it off. After she'd already paid $18,000, she found the green number and arranged to escape.

Marina, a Ukrainian girl, left her drunken husband and a small boy to come to Italy. She was taken from town to town in Eastern Europe, passed from boss to boss, raped and beaten along the way. She couldn't communicate with her captors, who spoke a Slavic language. She worked in a town outside of Naples, after her pimp took her there blindfolded, and she wasn't allowed to speak to the other prostitutes. After several months, she got a client to take her to a meeting with a social worker, and she escaped.

At the other end of the table sat Kira, who worked in Nigeria as a hairdresser. One day, some people arrived at the store offering her work in Italy at a shoe factory, with assurances that soon she'd find a job as a hairdresser. They said she'd have to pay for the voyage, but didn't tell her how much. They took her to Morocco, where she stayed in a hotel in Casablanca for five months. Another man came one day and took her across the mountains by foot to the sea. They tried to cross the ocean in a rubber dinghy. They spotted a police boat, and one of the other girls in the boat went overboard to avoid it and drowned. The police put Kira in prison for five days, then returned her to Algeria, where the man who arranged the first attempt found her again. They took another ferryboat to Spain, and then a bus to Italy, where she worked for several months to pay back her $40,000 debt. When she escaped, and contacted her family, she found that the organized criminals had beaten her mother in Nigeria so badly she would never again walk without limping. Frightened, she went to the police and denounced her captor, and ended up in the safe house.

Dara, a dark-haired, 21-year-old Moldavian eating a plate of pasta, got a degree as a computer programmer at home, but couldn't find work. A friend's boyfriend told her he could find work for her in Italy in a pizzeria. When Dara accepted, he told her there wasn't enough time to call her family to say goodbye. A group of men with cellphones, including a bald-headed boss, took her and several other girls to Hungary, changing cars several times along the way. When the man told them they'd have to become prostitutes to pay a debt, they cried. They were constantly guarded by two Yugoslavian men, and brought to a house where men came to look them over, touching their bodies and genitals. When they left with the men they understood that they had been sold. They were forced to cross the mountains in Albania barefoot, so as not to make noise, in November, when the temperature was near freezing. In Albania, they went in a police car to a hotel, where rubber rafts were waiting. They crossed the sea to Italy, where they walked for hours in a forest until they met a car driven by an Italian. He hid them in the baggage compartment and back seat until they arrived in Bologna.

Dara worked in Bologna, where she was constantly controlled by her pimp, who told her she couldn't talk to the other girls. The boss threatened to kill her family in Moldavia if she tried to escape. He forbade her to wear pants on the street, even in winter, and forced her to have anal sex with clients so she could double her price. One day Dara left her post and went with a client who offered to help her. He told her he couldn't do anything for her without a passport, and returned her to the street, where her boss was waiting. He beat her viciously and locked her in a bathroom for a whole day without food. Later that night his brother beat her violently and threatened her with death. The next day, he sold her to another group of Albanians. After working for several more months, always accompanied by men who held her head down in the car on the way to work, a client helped her escape, hid her in his house, and told her about the program against trafficking, where she finally arranged to meet with a social worker.

The young women at the table don't seem to carry the emotional scars of their past two years on the streets. They cheerfully clear the table and do the dishes, taking turns holding the baby. None of them ever talks about their former lives, either in the countries they came from or on the streets in Italy. They do what the social workers tell them, but no more.

But Anna Angioni, the Rome psychologist, says the emotional scars remain. It's hard for these girls to take an active role in shaping their own lives, since they've always done what other people told them to do. Many of them are passive, thinking that what happened to them happened because they're fundamentally weak. Many of them are focused on making money, as if their debt still exists. Some of them constantly wash their hands, obsessively, as a way of trying to rid themselves of their dirty experience. But the very fact that they lived through the experience, and managed to escape, Angioni says, is the basis for building their self-esteem.

"These girls have survived," she says. "Now they have to take their lives into their own hands."

For these young women, born into such desperate poverty that they would trust a stranger to take them away from their families, living in Italy for free while someone helps them learn the language and get a job is an amazing opportunity. Finally, after all they've been through, they've managed to make their dream of living and working in Italy come true.

Meanwhile, Italian TV programs, hungrily watched by Eastern European girls who want to learn the language so that they, too, can go to Italy, air commercials warning that what sound like good job opportunities end in forced prostitution. Some of the girls will believe the commercials and stay home, some will hope they won't have to be on the streets too long, and others will go anyway, trusting that their boyfriend's friend will get them that job in the pizzeria.

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