The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade (Hardcover)

by Victor Malarek (Author) "EVERY DAY, scores of young women throughout the former East Bloc are lured by job offers that lead to a hellish journey of sexual slavery..." (more)
Key Phrases: trafficked women, trafficking situation, trafficking victims, State Department, United States, Tel Aviv (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Award-winning Canadian journalist Malarek reports on the most recent wave in the global sex trade, sparked by the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. According to the U.S. State Department, at least 800,000–900,000 impoverished young women, many of them orphans, from Eastern and Central Europe, are lured with promises of jobs as waitresses, nannies or maids in Western Europe or North America. Instead, they find themselves imprisoned in apartments, massage parlors or brothels in countries ranging from South Korea, Bosnia and Japan to Israel and Germany. With "ruthless efficiency," in the words of one European official, Russian and other organized crime syndicates control this human trade, which offers high profits with little risk of interference thanks to "complacency, complicity, and corruption" on the part of national governments and law enforcement. One of the more horrific examples Malarek offers involves sex slaves in Bosnia who serviced NATO and UN peacekeepers after the war in 1995. Malarek recounts the affecting first-person stories of numerous victims. The author has excellent research skills and clearly makes his case with the hope of creating enough outrage to stop this traffic in women. However, his hyperbolic, tabloid style of writing is distracting. The facts are horrendous enough to speak for themselves.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description
On the black market, they're the third most profitable com- modity, after illegal weapons and drugs-the only difference being that these goods are human, though to their handlers they are wholly expendable. They are women and girls, some as young as 12, from all over the Eastern bloc, where sinister networks of organized crime have become entrenched in the aftermath of the collapse of Communist regimes. In Israel, they're called Natashas, whether they're actually from Russia, Bosnia, the Czech Republic, or Ukraine, no matter what their real names may be. They're lured into vans and onto airplanes with promises of jobs as waitresses, mod-els, nannies, dishwashers, maids, and dancers. But when they arrive at their destinations, they are stripped of their identifi-cation, and their nightmare begins. They are sold into pros-titution and kept enslaved; those who resist are beaten, raped, and sometimes killed as examples. They often have nowhere to turn; in many cases, the men who should be res- cuing them-from immigration officials to police officers and international peacekeepers-are among their aggressors.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing (September 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559707356
• ISBN-13: 978-1559707350
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #223,379 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well researched and very sad, February 27, 2006

By	A. Medina "movie man" (Brooklyn, N.Y. United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade (Paperback)

This is a very informative book and one of the saddest I have read. The sad plight of Eastern European women in the sex trade has reached monumental proportions. It doesn't look like there is anything to stop the trade unless politicians seriously get involved. I was very moved by the personal stories of these women. Malarek did the right thing by investigating hot spots himself in various countries. Well written and doesn't drag. Engaging and honest.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Human Trafficking Essential, November 20, 2005

By	Jeff Platt "Jeff Platt" (Bridgewater, Maine) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

'The Natashas : Inside the New Global Sex Trade' is certainly not the first book to expose the international human slave trade, but it is essential reading all the same. Human trafficking, or "trafficking in persons," as it is called by the US State Department, is a complex and revolting issue. The more we learn about it, the more we are aghast at such a disgusting crime. Our hearts break for the victims and despair under the weight of the overwhelming numbers involved. There are many books, some quite good, others less so, but most of them are out of date--predating The Natashas by many years. However, The Natashas is one of four recent books that stand above the rest. They are unquestionably accurate, moving and informative. Together, these four books are the essential beginning course in understanding human trafficking.

'The Natashas : Inside the New Global Sex Trade' offers a desperate truth about the victims, their experiences, dark and ugly. Not an easy book to read, but an essential part of understanding the human cost of human trafficking.

This is the third book to read in understanding human trafficking. First, read 'Race Against Evil: The Secret Missions of the Interpol Agent Who Tracked the World's Most Sinister Criminals;' then 'Illicit : How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy;' followed by 'Woman, Child for Sale: The New Slave Trade in the 21st Century.'

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read on a Modern Holocaust, April 19, 2006

By	TomPaine77 "TomPaine77" - See all my reviews

Just as when Auschwitz and Treblinka were in operation, few people today are paying attention to the mass annihilation of countless hundreds of thousands of women and girls in the worldwide rape mills. These females are the seed corn of struggling Eastern European nations: 1 in 5 has a university degree, and most of the others are at least trying to get a university education. They answer bogus job offers which lead to sex slavery in hopes of having enough money to finish their higher education. Instead, they end up dead, insane, crippled or in halfway houses far from home. Only when this issue becomes a drumbeat among humane citizens in all informed and educated countries will concrete action ever be taken to stop this enormous destruction of human lives and potential.

Despite what P. Pray said about Malarek's book, it is well-researched. Malarek travelled extensively and interviewed numerous people in the Czech Republic, including the Czech/German border area which is apparently an entire region given over to mob-controlled sex slavery, heavily guarded by many on-the-take Czech cops. P. Pray is probably in the 'Natasha' business himself.....think about this book, and the victims it describes, the next time you hear a guy making veiled leering comments about his trip to Prague/Berlin/Amsterdam/Munich/Moscow/Dubai/Greece/Istanbul/Bangkok/Manila/Vegas/Atlantic City.....read this book and you'll realize that when Anne Frank said that people were generally good at heart, that she'd spent too much time in the attic. As an Army officer, I was especially shocked and saddened by the descriptions of girls being repeatedly and routinely raped, traded and sold by US servicemen and contractors in Bosnia, Kosovo and South Korea, with the knowledge and complicity of senior US commanders. I had heard soldiers making sniggering comments about "juicy bars" in the Balkans and Korea; now I know what they were referring to. And this is the Army/Marine Corps full of self-styled "God-fearing Christians" which fights for "freedom" in Iraq and elsewhere?! "How can Satan cast out Satan?" If God punishes the perpetrators of slavery and industrialized rape, then the US and many other states are in for some serious retribution......

Given the ubiquity of the governmental, bureaucratic and NGO corruption described by Malarek, the only probable solutions to the sex slave trade are 1) general social awareness of the crimes within countries able to press politically for solutions, as well as source nations of trafficked women; 2) AGGRESSIVE acts like economic sanctions by states like the US against nations like Germany, Greece, Italy, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, et al which are either exporting their females for sex slavery, or importing them; and 3) the "Medellin solution": emulation of the Columbians who destroyed Pablo Escobar's criminal drug-trafficking empire by tracking and executing large numbers of those connected with the drug trade which undermined Columbian society. Widespread resistance networks of victims' families, their friends and sympathizers, and patriotic citizens in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltic states and other afflicted countries, ready and eager to kill pimps, procurers, mob accountants and bankers, as well as those who knowingly abuse sex slaves, would dramatically gain world attention to the trade. Especially if American johns were the ones being shot or stabbed!

"A gun not words is needed" --Ilya Ehrenburg, after the liberation of Maidanek extermination camp, 1944