The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade

10 THE SHERIFF’S PLAYGROUND

IN THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT’S ATTEMPTS to grade and police world trafficking, understandably it does not rank itself; that would be a conflict of interest. Yet it does deserve a ranking. The U.S. faces a serious problem: each year an estimated 20,000 people are trafficked into the country, entering by air on bogus travel documents or smuggled overland through Canada and Mexico. On its home turf, however, the U.S. has made significant strides in aggressively pursuing traffickers, jailing them with hard time and assisting victims with a variety of programs. In fact, it can be considered a leader. So, based on its homeland efforts, it deserves to be a Tier One nation.

But in one particular criminal case, it made a colossal blunder—a blunder that resulted in the repeated rapes of several innocent young Ukrainian women trafficked into the sex trade in Los Angeles.

IT WAS THE KIND OF NEWS conference police forces dream of, yielding headlines across the country and congratulatory pats on the back. On May 3, 2001, a coterie of stern-faced federal law enforcement types gathered at the FBI field office in Los Angeles to announce a major human smuggling bust. At a makeshift podium, FBI agents, flanked by colleagues in the U.S. Border Patrol, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Department of Justice, announced they had smashed a sophisticated international ring that had funneled hundreds of “illegal aliens” from Ukraine into the United States through the Mexican border. But there was more to this story. Something the agents weren’t talking about and must have been hoping, even praying, that the phalanx of journalists covering the event wouldn’t clue into. They didn’t.

The story line had the feel of a Hollywood movie. It all began with a chance discovery along a remote, dusty trail from Tijuana to San Diego. In late 1999 a U.S. Border Patrol officer on a routine inspection discovered a video camera. When he viewed the videotape he couldn’t understand a word of what was being said. The language definitely wasn’t

Spanish. The tape was turned over to headquarters and sent off for translation, and when it came back the boys on the border got quite the chuckle. It turned out the tape was of a Ukrainian couple documenting their illegal trek into the United States. The trail was put under surveillance and, shortly afterward, the Border Patrol snagged a Mexican guide smuggling five more Ukrainians into the country. The “illegal aliens” were interrogated, and based on the information they provided, an elaborate sting operation was launched on Valentine’s Day, 2000.

By May of the following year, the ringleaders and their co-conspirators were rounded up in predawn raids throughout the Los Angeles area. The bust made for juicy headlines. The agents basked in the limelight. It wasn’t every day they could boast about their successes. In all, eighteen people had been indicted, including the ringleader, her top aide and four members of her family.

“This investigation further underscores the global nature of crime… and the threats we now realize from abroad,” FBI assistant director James DeSarno intoned at the press conference.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Saunders then noted that “some of the aliens were young women who upon their arrival were sold into prostitution.”

Now that tidbit of information certainly caught the attention of the media hounds. After all, smuggling people across the Mexican border into the U.S. was old news. This had a new and titillating twist. Sex sells, and smuggling young women from Kyiv to L.A. to work as hookers was the stuff of headlines.

But in recounting details of the sting, the investigators glossed over several significant facts. First—a murder. And not just any murder. The victim was Lyuda Petushenko, a prostitute and an enterprising madam who ran an upscale escort service out of her San Fernando Valley apartment. Second—six of the Ukrainians smuggled by the ring had been forced into prostitution. Four of them had been purchased by Petushenko, and one of them, a striking twenty-two-year-old blonde by the name of Oksana Meshkova, had been charged in the woman’s death.

What the agents also didn’t get into—mainly because the reporters didn’t ask—was why the FBI, INS and U.S. Border Patrol held off rescuing these women before they were sold into prostitution and sexual slavery.

During the operation, between May and September of 2000, investigators wiretapped the phones, cell phones and fax machines of the key suspects involved. Based on the tapes, as well as key emails, they learned of six “events,” each involving a separate group of Ukrainians being smuggled into the U.S. They also learned that one of these groups wasn’t like the others: it was being trafficked into the L.A. sex market. Particularly troubling was the wiretaps’ revelation that the young women in this group had no idea of the fate that awaited them. However, the listeners—the FBI—certainly knew. They heard the smugglers discuss the entire plan. They heard that the women were upset when they were told of their fate. And they heard the smugglers discussing how to keep the women from trying to escape.

Yet, while five separate groups of smuggled aliens were captured immediately by agents, some within minutes of setting foot on U.S. soil, the sixth group—the women—weren’t rounded up until after the L.A. madam wound up dead… six weeks down the road. That was quite a delay—one that defies logic and crosses moral and ethical boundaries. For the victims, it spelled endless days, nights and weeks of sexual servitude. And throughout this period the authorities simply listened and watched… and quietly lay in wait.

The question is, What were they waiting for? The authorities knew the exact moment these women illegally entered the U.S. They could have arrested them then. More to the point, they knew exactly what was going to happen to them. They knew the women were distraught about being forced to become prostitutes. Once the women arrived, the FBI knew where they were being kept. They even heard a discussion that one of the women was raped. Still, they didn’t move.

Was the FBI waiting for something more newsworthy to happen? Because if that was the intention, it most certainly did. Petushenko was brutally beaten and then shot to death at point-blank range in the chest, a murder that was directly linked to the smuggling ring. With a dead madam on their hands, the FBI scrambled into damage control. In the end, however, they had nothing to worry about. The trafficked women wound up as mere footnotes to the feature operation—the takedown of an international gang involved in people smuggling.

A key character in the conspiracy was Tetyana Komisaruk, portrayed in FBI documents as a gruff, nasty field general with a penchant for colorful language and uttering threats. Preoccupied with the details, she referred to the people she was smuggling as “the fools” or “merchandise.” Tetyana was bent on keeping the profits in the family. Her smuggling empire on the American side included her husband, Valeriy, their two daughters and a son-in-law.

Whereas Tetyana lacked social graces, her top aide oozed charisma and confidence. The son of Jewish émigré parents, Serge Mezheritsky once ran unsuccessfully for city council in West Hollywood, an area heavily populated by Ukrainian and Russian émigrés. But he was hard to pin down. He went by a series of aliases, including Sergei Parfenov, Serge Merritt and Seryozha.

The gang also had several key associates in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, including the director and several employees of a travel agency called Svit Tours. According to a 113-page affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the smuggling scheme had its roots in Svit Tours. It was a natural fit. The travel agents would recruit men and women in Kyiv, provide them with valid Mexican tourist visas and fly them to Mexico via Amsterdam. From Mexico City, the tourists were bussed either to a hotel in Tijuana or a villa in nearby Rosarita. Then they were smuggled into the U.S. by foot, car or boat. Once across the border, they were shuffled onto a bus or train for Los Angeles airport for flights to New York, Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit. U.S. authorities took 200 of these illegal aliens into custody, but the total count over a two-year period may have run as high as 2000. And with each tourist paying a hefty fee for the “Mexican Tour Package,” the operation was a lucrative one.

While most of the illegal aliens were deported, a few were kept in the U.S. as witnesses. After Nina Rogozhyna was arrested for entering the U.S. illegally she explained to FBI agents how the operation worked. According to the sales pitch, the package included a Mexican tourist visa, round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations. The cost: $3150. More important, it included a direct link to the smugglers. On August 7, 2000, she and three other Ukrainians had left Kyiv for Mexico City. From there they boarded a bus to Tijuana, where they checked into the Plazas Las Glorias Hotel. Three days later a man who identified himself as Seryozha (Mezheritsky) met with them to set out the smuggling arrangements. The cost: $2500 cash. The next week the smugglers picked up the first two members of the group, and Seryozha informed Rogozhyna that the operation had been successful. Four days later she and the remaining member got into the trunk of a car. The car was pulled over for inspection on the U.S. side of the San Ysidro Port of Entry, and the entire group was arrested.

In short, FBI wiretaps and visual surveillance uncovered five individual smuggling operations such as this. The sixth, however, was in a league of its own. According to the FBI documents, six young women arrived in Mexico from Ukraine in early June 2000. Wiretap conversations between Tetyana and her cohorts clearly indicate that the women were going to be used as prostitutes. They also revealed that Mezheritsky had devised a grandiose plan to form a prostitution ring that would yield him $10,000 a day. To augment his criminal proceeds, he hoped to blackmail well-heeled Hollywood clients with secret videotapes of illicit sexual encounters with his women. But there was a minor hitch—the women had no idea they were being trafficked into prostitution.

In one captured phone conversation on July 2, 2000, Valeriy Komisaruk told his wife that he had just met with the women in Tijuana and that they were in shock when they heard what they were required to do. The couple talked about the possibility of the girls making a run for it. Tetyana coldly suggested that maybe he should “tie them up with chains.” In another wiretap, Tetyana warned one of the buyers, Garik Vinitsky, a forty-one-year-old West Hollywood resident, that “this merchandise could easily run away.” She stressed that she wouldn’t be responsible if the girls bolted. “In their place I would run away within the first five minutes,” she said.

On July 4, seventeen Ukrainians boarded Mezheritsky’s thirty-six-foot boat. A short while later it docked at a marina in San Diego. Most of the occupants were whisked off to the train station for a quick ride to L.A. The six women, however, were escorted to the Travel Lodge near the harbor. Vinitsky was waiting. He selected two young women—Helena and Vika. Petushenko took the other four. Tetyana was paid $2500 in cash for each of the smuggled women.

Over the next several weeks, FBI surveillance revealed that Mezheritsky’s plan was in full swing and that he was raking in the dough. On various occasions he discussed his operation with associates and friends, bragging about how much money the girls were making, how hard they were working and their sexual talents.

They even discussed where the girls were being housed. The FBI listened, but did nothing.

On other occasions, Mezheritsky, the pimp, directed associates where to pick up and deliver women. Still no response from the cops. In one wiretap conversation, he’s heard talking about using one of the women to blackmail an unsuspecting client for a quarter of a million dollars. In another, he called his attorney, Alex Vankovn, asking him to arrange fake ID for one of the girls.

Vankovn responded, “She isn’t twenty-one yet. One has to make papers for her… I’ll have to talk to them to have it done.” The lawyer later told Mezheritsky that “they’re making the driver’s license for her… It’s phony but it looks real.”

After a month the wiretaps showed the situation was beginning to unravel. The women were becoming uncooperative and difficult. But Mezheritsky wasn’t about to let them walk away; as far as he was concerned, they still owed him money. Then the unexpected happened. Someone got killed.

On August 18, at 1:26 p.m., Mezheritsky got a frantic call from his lawyer, all captured on a wiretap.

“He killed your girlfriend… He killed your business completely!” Vankovn shouted.

“Absolutely, pal, he just totally killed my business,” Mezheritsky replied.

The “he” they were referring to was Alex Gabay, a.k.a. “the Boxer,” a thirty-six-year-old architect whose family emigrated from Russia when he was a teenager. Gabay had been a high school classmate of Mezheritsky and Vankovn.

When L.A. homicide detectives arrived at Petushenko’s apartment, they found her bloodied, lifeless body sprawled on the floor of her bedroom. They were at a loss for leads. Their search yielded no tangible clues, just a closetful of expensive lingerie and a night table crammed with condoms. Then, a key discovery: as they started to trace incoming and outgoing calls, they stumbled across the FBI wiretap on Petushenko’s phone. After that, it didn’t take the cops long to piece together the events. The problem was distinguishing self-interest from the truth.

L.A. homicide detectives interrogated Mezheritsky on September 6 and he folded like a cheap card table. He admitted to being involved in smuggling aliens across the border from Mexico and fingered Tetyana as the ringleader, claiming she made all the travel arrangements with traffickers in Kyiv. Then he told the detectives about a trip to Mexico in early June where he happened upon six girls waiting to be transported across the border. Tetyana, he maintained, had told him they were “whores.” But after speaking with them, Mezheritsky said, he quickly determined that they weren’t prostitutes and had been tricked into coming to the U.S. to work as hookers. When he contacted Tetyana and voiced his concerns, he said she informed him that two individuals had already paid for the cost of the girls’ passage and would be picking them up as soon as they arrived in San Diego.

Mezheritsky proclaimed he felt uncomfortable about bringing unwilling girls across the border to work as prostitutes and adamantly denied any involvement in the trade. It just wasn’t something that fit with his moral compass, he said, adding that the smuggling incident involving these women was, in fact, the beginning of the end of his association with Tetyana. He said he broke off their business dealings because she was forcing girls to be prostitutes. Mezheritsky had no problem justifying smuggling desperate people into the land of opportunity, but he had to draw the line at sexual slavery.

When Tetyana was brought in for questioning on September 25, she offered a variation on the theme. She too admitted to smuggling, but vehemently denied involvement in any kind of prostitution or white slavery. Predictably, she claimed Mezheritsky was the mastermind behind the entire operation. Tetyana also told the detectives about Mezheritsky’s plan to wire up several apartments with concealed video cameras so that he could blackmail large sums of money from clients who were sleeping with the prostitutes.

While their stories didn’t jibe, one fact was clear to the L.A. cops: the girls had been trafficked unwillingly into prostitution. Olena G.—one of the original six—told detectives how Mezheritsky had conned her into leaving Ukraine by promising her a job as a model. She admitted being smuggled into the U.S. as part of a group of seventeen people on a boat manned by Tetyana’s husband, Valeriy. Once they landed, Petushenko told her she’d have to work off an $8000 debt. Olena swore she didn’t have the faintest idea that she was expected to work as a prostitute. Had she known that, she would never have left Ukraine. The accounts from the other five women were similar.

For his part, Vinitsky admitted to buying two of the women but complained that he wasn’t pleased with his purchase because “they were not up for the task.” It was evident, he said, that they weren’t aware of what they’d be doing once they arrived and that working as prostitutes came as a shock. He noted that when he first met the women in the motel in San Diego, they didn’t look right. They didn’t have the right attitude for the work they were being brought in to do and were terribly distressed.

Next the homicide detectives zeroed in on “the Boxer.” They learned that a few weeks before the murder, Mezheritsky had thrown a party for the four new Ukrainian women in his stable. Gabay was a guest and was instantly smitten by one of the women—Oksana Meshkova. He asked her to move into his L.A. loft. She jumped at the chance to get away from her demanding madam.

At the murder trial in January 2002, Ronald D. Hedding, Gabay’s lawyer, portrayed his client as a knight rescuing a damsel in distress. He said Gabay saw a frightened young woman who was alone in a foreign country, didn’t know the language and certainly didn’t want to work as a prostitute. “Alex was trying to help her out. They met, they fell in love and she moved in with him,” Hedding said. “You have a man who was trying to help a woman out. There was absolutely no reason for him to kill for her.”

According to the evidence, on August 17, Gabay and Oksana went to Petushenko’s apartment with the intention of finding out what had happened to Vika, one of the girls who had come over from Ukraine. The madam was in no mood to chat. After all, she was out $8000 because of Oksana’s refusal to work off her debt. A heated argument ensued and the two women came to blows. Moments later, Petushenko lay dead on the floor from a single gunshot wound to the chest. Gabay maintained his innocence throughout the trial, saying that Oksana had shot the woman with his gun. Oksana testified that her boyfriend intervened in the argument and killed Petushenko. She too had been charged with murder, but prosecutors later dropped the case after she agreed to testify against her former lover. The jury found Gabay guilty of second-degree murder, and on March 9, 2002, he was sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison.

The trial of the Komisaruk-Mezheritsky smuggling ring began in earnest on May 6, 2002. In his opening statement, assistant U.S. attorney Mark Aveis described the cash-only ring as a “full service” operation. He painted a portrait of an illegal family business with each member assigned specific tasks, from teaching the would-be immigrants how to act and dress American to coaching them on what to say to Border Patrol agents if they got caught. Aveis described Tetyana as the ring-leader, responsible for overseeing the “comings and goings” of the smuggled Ukrainians. Her husband, Valeriy, “helped operate staging points in Mexico.” Mezheritsky provided boats and cars for smuggling illegal aliens and “worked with Mexican guides to shepherd illegal aliens into the United States.” Aveis also referred to hours of wiretapped cell phone conversations, which he likened to “a play-by-play commentary by defendants regarding their own activity.”

Defense attorney Ellen Barry, who was representing Valeriy Komisaruk, pointed out to the jury that the smuggled aliens— witnesses for the prosecution—were no innocents. “They were willing to deceive whoever they had to deceive to get across the border,” she said. “And when they got caught and found out what the government was willing to offer them, they were willing to do and say whatever they had to.” Barry added that her client helped fulfill the dreams of Ukrainians desperate for a better life in the United States. “Their dream was so strong that they did whatever they could to get here.”

Seven weeks later, after three days of deliberation, the ring-leaders and their minions were found guilty. Tetyana was later sentenced to fourteen years in prison, Valeriy to twelve and a half years and Mezheritsky to seventeen and a half years. All tough sentences that send a clear message to criminals who contemplate getting into the business of people smuggling and the trafficking of women.

But what the trials never touched on was that the murder could have been prevented, as could the hardship the six young Ukrainian women had to endure for six long, torturous weeks. Had the FBI brought down the smuggling ring as soon as it learned what was going on, Petushenko would probably be alive today and the women pushed into prostitution wouldn’t have to carry a nightmare with them for the rest of their lives.

It’s not as if the evidence was inadequate or too weak to act on immediately. Various U.S. enforcement agents involved in the smuggling investigation admitted to understanding the facts and the events occurring right under their noses. Warning signs were flashing all over. In one of many affidavits filed by the FBI, special agent Hiram Prado of the U.S. Border Patrol said that upon listening to the tapes, and based on his training and experience over the years, he believed Tetyana and her husband were talking about “smuggling females into the United States to be prostitutes.” He also said he believed that the girls were being smuggled to be used as prostitutes “for Vinitsky and others” and that Vinitsky contacted associates in Ukraine “to lure girls” to the United States.

Translation: the women weren’t willing participants in the prostitution scheme. This, of course, is just one of many documents showing that the FBI understood fully what was unfolding but did nothing to stop it until it was much too late. From the very outset, it was evident that this was a classic case of trafficking in women for sexual exploitation. The wiretaps showed that. Documents prepared by the various investigators stated that unequivocally. It’s also important to note that during the same period the women were being kept under “surveillance,” U.S. authorities scooped several Ukrainian aliens in five other “smuggling events.” The difference here is that none of them were destined to work in prostitution because they all had relatives and friends in the U.S. and had paid their full freight.

The only conclusion one can make of this—because the FBI won’t comment—is that U.S. authorities saw a potential case of trafficking in women, and as it was a political hot-button issue, they wanted to jump on the bandwagon. Why else would they have waited? The victims first had to be trafficked and then an iron-clad case had to be built. In other words, like sacrificial lambs to slaughter, the Ukrainian women would have to be forced into prostitution and raped.

THE L.A. CASE, seriously botched as it was, is certainly not enough to relegate the U.S. to a lower tier. However, the U.S. must also be judged on what its ambassadors of goodwill do in foreign countries, and on this point alone it deserves to be hung on Tier Three. For one, its male citizens make up a majority of the sex tourists traveling the globe in search of one-night stands. As well, a number of notable international situations palpably demonstrate that the Americans don’t practice what they preach, and that when they get caught, they retreat into crass geopolitics.

When the U.S. State Department placed South Korea on Tier Three in its first TIP report, it rightly accused the Korean government of doing “little to combat this relatively new and worsening problem of trafficking in persons.” Needless to say, the slap triggered a sharp rebuke from the Koreans, an important U.S. ally in the Far East. The key phrase in the U.S. assessment was that trafficking in South Korea “is relatively new and worsening.” But when Korean officials laid out the root cause in precise, unequivocal language to the Americans behind closed doors, State Department officials were ordered into scramble mode to correct the error of their ways.

A year later, the Republic of Korea was vaulted to the top tier of nations in the 2002 TIP report, which stated that the country “fully complies with minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.” Just three months earlier, however, the State Department’s own Country Report on Human Rights Practices had noted that “women from Russia are trafficked to the country for sexual exploitation.”

So what was really behind the State Department’s 180-degree turn? Well, the answer can be found just outside the gates of some 100 U.S. military bases in South Korea, where 37,000 American troops are stationed to defend democracy and freedom. Down the road from each base is what’s referred to as a camp town or, in more graphic terms, a sexual playground for American GIs. These soldiers flock by the hundreds to bars with names like America, Dallas, Hollywood, USA, Las Vegas, Double Deuce, Cowboy and New York.

The most notorious town is Tongduchon, next to Camp Casey, the largest American base and home to 13,000 GIs from the 2nd Infantry Division. Inside the nightclubs, with signs in Korean indicating “foreigners only,” scantily attired Russian and Filipino hostesses vie for the attention of lonesome soldiers. Officially, the women are “guest relations officers.” The soldiers jokingly refer to them as “juicy girls.” In dark stalls, young men grope the women or pay a little extra to use a back room for privacy. According to the U.S. military regulations, these bars of ill repute are off limits and any soldier caught in flagrante delicto is subject to discipline. U.S. soldiers are also required to obey the laws of their host nation, and prostitution is illegal in South Korea.

The Korean government is just as culpable in this trade as the American military. When these women enter the country on so-called entertainment visas, government officials know full well where they’re going and what they’ll be doing. Crudely, they’re simply fodder for what is euphemistically known as R and R, an activity that dates back to when the U.S. military first arrived in the country in the 1950s.

Back then, the camp town bars were teeming with destitute, desperate Korean women. But as the years passed and economic times improved, the locals opted for real jobs in plants and factories. The bars began to empty, and somehow the void had to be filled. So the club owners united under the banner of the Korean Special Tourism Association and began lobbying the government in the late 1990s to allow foreign women into the country to work as bar hostesses. As a result the ubiquitous E-6 entertainment visa was devised, and the Special Tourism Association set out on the hunt for foreign talent. It was as easy as picking up a phone and talking to someone who knew someone with connections to organized crime. In no time, two readily available targets had been tagged: Russians and Filipinas.

A report compiled by the South Korean Justice Ministry indicates that from 1999 to 2002 the number of E-6 visas issued to foreign women rose by more than 50 percent each year. In 1999 there were 2522. A year later, 4317. In 2001 the number jumped to 6980, and in the first half of 2002, 6230 visas were issued. Of that total, more than 4200 women were listed as going to work in bars, nightclubs and hotels in camp towns near the U.S. bases. In 2002 Russian women made up the majority of “entertainers” with 1813, followed by 1471 from the Philippines, 643 from Uzbekistan, 126 from China, 113 from Ukraine, 44 from Bulgaria and 34 from Kazakhstan.

The E-6 visa is an open secret. The Korean police have acknowledged publicly that it’s nothing more than a cover for prostitution. Korean women’s groups have documented scores of cases in which the visa holders are victims of trafficking for prostitution rings. In other words, these women are not free agents. They’re bought and owned by their pimp, usually the proprietor of the bar, and they’re required to work off their purchase price by servicing American soldiers.

A report entitled “A Review of Data on Trafficking in the Republic of Korea” done for the International Organization for Migration and released at its Geneva headquarters in September 2002 concluded that “the plight of trafficked women in South Korea is quite serious.” It charged that young foreign women are being lured to South Korea because they’re considered “essential to the survival of the military camp town businesses, which have been suffering from a declining supply of South Korean women.” The study also alluded to some level of organized criminal involvement in getting the women into the country and estimated that hundreds arrive every month to be used solely in the sex industry.

The U.S. military command has long been aware of the situation. Everyone at the Pentagon knows. The military brass would have to be blind not to see the lines of ramshackle bars as they drive in and out of the camps. Yet the practice is allowed to continue. After all, boys will be boys, and in the eyes of their commanders, they deserve a little R and R.

South Korea isn’t the only place where U.S. troops indulge. On another continent halfway around the world, American soldiers—along with combatants from a host of other nations—occupy their off hours in the company of sex slaves held prisoner in scores of brothels and bars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the renegade Serb province of Kosovo. Many of the victims—mainly from Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and Bulgaria—are mere teenagers. And the soldiers know that most of these young women have been trafficked.

Over the past three years, scores of raids to free these women have been carried out all over the region by members of the UN-mandated international police force. But there is one area that these police officers tend to avoid—the U.S.-controlled sector in Kosovo. When police raid a brothel in that sector, they do so only with the express agreement of the U.S. military command.

In October 2001, while researching the trafficking issues, I headed for Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. There I met a team of dedicated police officers in the Trafficking in Prostitution Investigation Unit (TPIU) and got the green light to take part in a series of five brothel raids. The raids would take place in the American sector. What happened shook me to my very core and opened my eyes to what was really going on.

JOHN RANDOLPH AMBLED THROUGH the crowded corridor of the courthouse in Pristina with all the confidence and bearing of a U.S. marshal. He looked impressive dressed in a royal blue jumpsuit uniform adorned with the American flag and various other badges. Randolph stands over six feet, and has dark brown hair and intense eyes. Originally a Texas lawman from Houston, he signed up with DynCorp, the American firm that recruits U.S. police officers to serve as international cops for the United Nations in various world hot spots. Randolph’s mission was to bring law and order to the chaos of Kosovo. Unfortunately, he pulled the short end of the straw and was assigned to the TPIU in a backwater called Gnjilane, a town he refers to as “a cesspool” because of its huge number of brothels.

On this day in early October 2001, the officer was in the courthouse ferrying three teenage girls through the so-called judicial system. The girls had been rescued the week before in a raid on a brothel in nearby Ferrazaj. “We pulled seven girls out of the Mega Bar,” Randolph began in a slow drawl. “They were all forced into prostitution by the owner. We shut the place down for good and now we’re trying to get the judge to listen to what the girls have to say about what happened to them. Trouble is, the judges here prefer not to believe these girls over one of their own. They prefer to think of these girls as prostitutes and nothing more.”

Randolph was one focused cop and he wasn’t about to let a wishy-washy judge sidetrack his case. He had put a lot of work into the Mega Bar raid and he was definitely proud of the result. Well, almost proud. Later, sitting at a café nursing a cappuccino across the street from the courthouse, Randolph went on a rant about the bleak situation in that forsaken Balkan province.

But there was something else eating away at Randolph— something deeper, more sinister, and I was stunned when he finally blurted it out during his account of the Mega Bar takedown.

“What’s a Texas breathalyzer?”

“That’s what we call a blow job in Texas. I was so disgusted and pissed off with them. Here we are UN peacekeepers trying to establish law and order and they’re out there getting freebies from girls being forced to be sex slaves.”

“What did you do about it?”

“Nothing yet. I’m thinking of turning them in to Internal Affairs.”

The next afternoon I returned to the courthouse. The three Romanian girls pulled from the Mega Bar raid were scheduled to give their statements before a judge. Oleksander Mazur, the no-nonsense Ukrainian cop attached to the TPIU in Pristina, escorted me into a room at the far end of the building where the girls were waiting. An officious female interpreter sat quietly on a bench across from the girls. She was reading a glossy fashion magazine.

Mazur smiled warmly at the girls and asked in Ukrainian how they were holding up. They giggled nervously and shrugged their shoulders. “Look at them. They’re just girls,” he said, turning to me. “When we picked them up and took them to the police station, they looked like hookers of the bottom class with their cheap makeup and very short skirts.”

Not one of the girls looked older than sixteen or seventeen. They were tense and their faces were etched with worry. Just a week earlier they had been sex slaves, servicing a dozen men a night. Yet on this day, aside from their pale complexions, they looked like typical high school kids in jeans, sweaters and running shoes. Two had short brown hair and the other had dark shoulder-length hair streaked with highlights. Their faces were fresh and innocent, but their eyes told a very different story. They were filled with sadness, distrust, fear and anger. There was no hint of joy or youthful exuberance. The girls appeared disoriented and clung to each other out of fear.

“I am going to find out what is going on with the judge,” Mazur said, disappearing down the crowded hallway.

Turning to the interpreter, I asked, “How did the girls end up in Ferrazaj?”

She glanced up from her magazine and put the question to the girls. Each responded in a near whisper.

“They were brought from Romania to Serbia and then over the mountains by the man who purchased them. They thought they would be working as waitresses,” the interpreter said with an air of detachment.

“How long have they been here?”

Pointing to the two girls with short brown hair, she replied, “They have been here four months. The other has been here three months.”

“Were they beaten at the bar where they worked?”

A few words were exchanged.

“They had to do as they were told. If they refused they were beaten.”

“Were the customers locals?”

“Much of the time.”

“And the other times?”

“They say there were soldiers… many peacekeepers.” “Do they know from where?”

“American, Greek, Turkish, Russian,” the girls said. There was no need for translation.

“And international police?”

“American, Turkish, Indian, African,” they said.

“Did the police officers pay them?”

The question was translated. The girls shook their heads no.

“Did any of them ever ask any of the international police officers for help?”

“No,” they replied in unison.

“Why not?”

“They did not trust them.”

At that moment, Mazur rushed in. “Come with me. John needs to speak with you.”

Randolph looked angry as he barreled toward me.

“I spoke with my boss at DynCorp last night and he told me to stay the fuck away from you. I’m not to talk to any journalists.”

“Why?” I asked.

“DynCorp hates the media!” he shouted. “My boss told me not to talk to you and he told me you’re not to go on any raids.”

“I have permission from UNMIK [United Nations Mission in Kosovo] to go on a raid,” I said calmly.

“Not if DynCorp has any say in it,” Randolph shot back. Mazur pulled me aside. “Not to worry,” he said. “DynCorp is not my boss. You will go on the raids and if John wants to stay in the office, he can stay in the office.”

On October 4, 2001, Derek Chappell, a Canadian cop from Ottawa, and Romea Ponza, an Italian police officer, got the okay from UNMIK headquarters to take me on an operation targeting five brothels in Ferrazaj. Chappell explained that the raids were being kept top secret. No one on the raiding parties would be told the locations until moments before the teams were to head out. All cell phones were to be turned off during the briefing, and remain off. That way, no one could tip off a bar owner about what was about to happen. We were to rendezvous with Mazur and his team at the briefing site—the Ukrainian UN army base just outside Gnjilane—at 2200 hours. Ukrainian commandos and an elite Ukrainian canine team were to spearhead the initial takedowns. Once the bars were secured, we would go in.

That evening, Chappell, Ponza and I headed out by jeep toward Ferrazaj in the direction of the Macedonian border. The drive along a winding, pockmarked road took about two hours, crossing through three military checkpoints—one British, one Greek and one American. When we finally rolled up to the Ukrainian military base, all was dark and eerily quiet. A lone sentry guarding the main gate let us into the compound, where we met the officer in charge. He gave us the bad news.

“I was informed by Oleksander Mazur a short while ago that the operation was canceled,” he said.

At Chappell’s request, the officer called Mazur and handed me the phone.

“I don’t know what has happened,” Mazur said. “Everything was fine one minute and all of a sudden the Americans cancel the raids. Something is very wrong here. I am very much pissed off. I feel I have lost face with you.”

“Did you speak to John Randolph?” I asked.

“Yes. He knew about the raids being canceled before I called him. Like I said, it is all very strange.”

Mazur then said that earlier in the day, a young Romanian woman had escaped from a bar in Ferrazaj and managed to make it to Pristina. “She jumped from a third-floor window. Her name was Tina. She told the TPIU investigator here that two other Romanian girls are being held at the bar. It was one of the bars we were going to hit tonight. I feel very bad about this.”

I asked Mazur for Randoph’s cell phone number. He obliged.

Randolph was at a bar in Gnjilane when I reached him. “What happened?” I asked, trying to keep my cool.

“I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.”

“Then I’ll go where you are.”

The bar was on a water-soaked, potholed road on the edge of the town. When we pulled up, Randolph was standing outside a nondescript building with a middle-aged man and woman. He was out of uniform, dressed in black jeans, a black leather jacket and a black T-shirt. The couple beside him was American and, judging from their girth, I guessed that they worked in administration. As they retreated toward the door, I noticed the sign on the window: DynCorp.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked Randolph.

“The raids were called off,” he said matter-of-factly. From his demeanor, I knew he’d been into the sauce.

“Who called off the raids?”

“The commander of the American peacekeeping forces in the region,” he replied gruffly.

At the door to the DynCorp office, the stout man turned to the woman and muttered loudly, “He should keep his mouth shut.”

Chappell interrupted. He was heading back to the Ukrainian military compound to see what more he could find out about the decision to abort raids.

As he drove off, I turned to Randolph and asked once again, “Why were the raids called off?”

“Like I told you, the regional commander shut it down because he wasn’t informed in advance by TPIU. Proper protocol wasn’t followed and apparently he was pissed off.”

“Protocol!” I said. “This was supposed to be a secret under-cover operation from what I was led to believe. It’s also a police operation against brothels holding trafficked girls, so I don’t see what it has to do with the American army.”

Randolph didn’t respond.

“How did the American commander find out about the raids?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Ask him yourself.”

I kept pressing. “Did you tell anyone about the raids?”

“I told my boss.”

“Which boss?”

“My boss here at DynCorp.”

“You’ve got to be joking. You told a company that supplies U.S. cops to Kosovo about a secret UN undercover police operation! What business does an American hire-a-cop outfit have meddling in a UN operation?”

Randolph was becoming visibly agitated.

“You work for the United Nations and the operations you undertake are for the United Nations,” I continued. “From where I stand, this is none of DynCorp’s business.”

“I work for DynCorp and the U.S. State Department. They’re my bosses and if they tell me I can’t take part in an operation then I don’t take part. They pay my salary. They hired me and they can fire my ass tomorrow and send me home.”

“I can’t believe you disclosed a secret operation to DynCorp.” I was boiling and trying to keep from losing it. “Are you aware that a Romanian girl escaped this morning from a bar in Ferrazaj?”

“Yeah. I know about it.”

“Mazur told me she informed the cops in Pristina that two Romanian girls are being held captive in that bar. Don’t you think they should be rescued?”

Randolph didn’t respond, but his troubled expression spoke volumes. He looked down the road. Chappell and Ponza were approaching in the jeep.

“What was the name of that bar again? Mazur mentioned it to me,” I said, knowing he hadn’t.

“The Playboy,” Randolph muttered.

“I gather it was one of the bars that was going to be hit tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Why don’t you mind your own business!” the Texan said in exasperation.

I kept up the pressure. “Do you have any idea how bad this looks? You’re a UN cop and you’re aware that two foreign girls are being held in a brothel against their will. You’ve known that since late this morning, and you’re sitting in a bar drinking while they’re being raped!”

“I’ll get around to it.”

“When?”

“I don’t report to you.”

“Yeah. I know. You report to DynCorp! You’re pathetic.” Randolph lunged forward, his contorted face right in mine. “Get the fuck out of here.” With that, he turned and stormed into the DynCorp office.

When I got to the jeep, Chappell was staring at me in disbelief.

“I thought the two of you were about to come to blows,” he said. “Did he tell you why the raids were aborted?”

“No. But I have a distinct feeling it has something to do with my presence here. Probably the boys at DynCorp and the U.S. regional commander didn’t want me to see any of their men being pulled out of the bars. That certainly wouldn’t have been a good public relations move.”

“You might be right,” Chappell admitted.

In silence, we started back in the direction of Pristina. We had just passed the first military checkpoint when Chappell asked what Randolph and I were arguing about.

I recounted the story of the Romanian girl’s escape earlier that day. “I was telling him how it would look that two other Romanian girls are being held captive at the same brothel while he sat at a bar drinking.”

“What did he say?” “He’ll get around to it.”

“Did he tell you the name of the bar?”

“Yeah, the Playboy.”

Chappell stared hard at the road for a moment and then glanced over at me. We had the same thought. He made a sharp U-turn and headed for Ferrazaj. As we neared the town, a massive incandescent yellow glow bounced off the night sky. It was the lights from Camp Bondsteel—the sprawling U.S. army base. We drove into the outskirts and saw the first signs of life from a well-lit bar on the right side of the road. It was in full swing. The parking lot was jammed and rock music was blaring through the windows. The bar was called the Apache. It had been raided on several occasions, but each time the cops arrived, no girls were found on the premises. I wondered if the Apache had been on our hit list. If it was, the owner certainly had nothing to worry about on this night.

As we motored through Ferrazaj, the streets were deserted. It was a dismal, run-down, industrial town. Most of the plants and factories sat idle, rusting, caked in dust and with windows broken. Chappell made a beeline for the local police station. As we got out of the jeep he pulled out his Ottawa City Police badge and strung it around his neck along with his UNMIK identification. Chappell informed the Turkish commander of the incident involving the Romanian girl and asked if he could get some backup to check on the other two Romanians who might still be at the Playboy Club. The commander was obliging. Two international police officers—a stocky, wide-faced Bulgarian and a white-haired, raspy-voiced American—and a half-dozen Kosovar cops were assigned to lead the charge.

But moments before we were about to pull out, something unsettling occurred. As we headed toward the parking lot the American officer peeled off behind a pillar. I noticed him flip open his cell phone. When he rejoined us I asked him whom he had called. “I was calling around to see if we could get some more backup,” he replied, without making eye contact.

I didn’t have a good feeling in my gut.

The drive to the Playboy took less than two minutes. It was just off the main drag in a dark, narrow alley. When we marched in, the sight that awaited us was, to say the least, odd. Five young women dressed in short shorts, skimpy halters and high platform shoes were huddled together on a couch adjacent to the bar. About a dozen men sat at tables scattered around the room with their backs against the wall. It was as though they had been expecting us.

The Bulgarian officer took charge, asking the girls for their passports. One by one, they got up and dutifully retrieved them from behind the bar. Two of the women were Romanian, the other three Moldovan.

“Ask the girls if any of them is being held against their will,” Chappell said.

The Bulgarian officer, who spoke Romanian, posed the question. I noticed two of the girls glance warily over at the bartender—a wiry, nasty-looking individual in a black leather jacket. All the girls shook their heads in unison. No!

“Those two definitely look afraid,” I whispered to Chappell. “And they’re both holding Romanian passports.”

One of the girls clutched a tiny teddy bear in her right hand and averted her eyes from the police officers.

The Bulgarian turned to the bartender. “We are told two Romanian girls are being held against their will.”

With a defiant sneer, the bartender countered that he didn’t know what the officer was talking about.

“What’s upstairs?” Chappell asked. “We’re going to take a look.”

Chappell and Ponza pulled out their guns and started up the concrete steps. I was right behind. On the second landing were two large rooms with four beds in each. Chappell looked down at the dressers. The cigarette butts in the ashtrays were still warm and so was the coffee in the mugs.

“Looks like they knew we were coming.”

“No kidding,” I said.

As we were heading back down we ran smack into an unexpected visitor—John Randolph.

“Why am I not surprised you’re behind this?” he snarled as I emerged at the top of the landing.

“Well, John, I figured someone had to take the initiative to find the two Romanian girls who wanted to be rescued.”

Randolph turned to Chappell. “Fancy seeing you here.” “Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.”

“Did you find the two Romanian girls you’re looking for?” “The bartender says he doesn’t know what we’re talking about,” I said.

Randolph’s eyes narrowed. He instructed the white-haired cop to bring the bartender up to the second floor. A moment later he was jostling the man up the stairwell.

“Where are the two Romanian girls?” Randolph asked the bartender in a firm voice.

The Bulgarian cop translated. The bartender shrugged his shoulders.

Suddenly, Randolph grabbed the bartender by the throat and slammed him bodily into the concrete wall.

“Where are the girls?”

The bartender just sneered.

Randolph reached behind his jacket, pulled out a gun and shoved the barrel inches from the man’s left eye.

“Tell me where the girls are or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

I turned to Chappell, who was shaking his head in disbelief. “He’s lost it. The guy thinks he’s in a Clint Eastwood movie,” I said.

“They left here two weeks ago! I took them to the Macedonian border where they took a bus back home!” the terrified bartender shouted.

“Liar! Where are they?” Randolph said, pressing the gun barrel into the man’s forehead.

“They have gone. Two weeks ago. I swear!”

“We’re closing this place down for good, motherfucker. You understand that? This place is history and you’re going to jail for a long time if you don’t tell me where those girls are.”

“I do not know. They have left,” he whined.

The bartender was handcuffed and dragged down the stairs.

In the bar, Randolph bellowed, “Ask these girls if they know where the two Romanians are!”

One of the girls, a skinny, hard-eyed Moldovan, spoke for the group. “They were here a week ago and they left. They went back home.”

“The bartender said two weeks. She says one week. I’ll bet they’re both lying,” I whispered to Chappell.

“We’re closing the place down. We’re taking the girls in for questioning,” Randolph barked.

One of the girls asked the Bulgarian officer a question. “They want to know if they can change into their regular clothes,” the cop said. “They feel ashamed to be taken to the police station dressed like this.”

“No,” Randolph said coldly. “They’re going the way they are.”

But leaving wasn’t going to be that easy. Outside, a large number of Kosovar men had gathered. With the bartender in handcuffs, Randolph’s American sidekick pushed him forcefully toward a jeep. The locals moved in closer and the jittery Kosovar police officers retreated in the direction of the vehicles. It was beginning to look like a Mexican standoff. The locals demanded to know why the bartender was being taken away.

“This is a police matter,” the white-haired officer shouted. “This place is shut down for good. The Playboy is history!”

The Bulgarian translated, and as he spoke the locals grew bolder. They stood their ground, firing heated epithets in Albanian at the Kosovar cops, who looked worried and afraid.

On the main road, two heavily armored personnel carriers rumbled past the alleyway. They came to an abrupt halt and disgorged a dozen commandos wearing black toques and camouflage uniforms and brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles. The sergeant was a six-foot bear of a man with steely eyes, a wide face and a square jaw. He calmly surveyed the situation. There was not a shred of fear in his face. Everyone and everything had come to a full stop as we all stared at this menacing hulk. Then I noticed the insignia over his breast pocket—a Trysub (Trident)—the Ukrainian symbol of freedom—and the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag on his shoulder.

“I’m Canadian Ukrainian,” I said in my best broken Ukrainian. “How are you?”

“Dobre,” he replied in a gruff voice. “What is going on here?”

“We’d like to take these girls to the police station but we’ve run into a bit of trouble,” I said, pointing to the Albanian Kosovars.

“No problem.”

He spit out a command and his men moved into position. He lowered his rifle and ordered the locals to assume the position against a wall. They were searched and told to remain in place until we left.

At the police station the girls were herded into a starkly furnished room on the second floor. They were visibly upset, cold and frightened. Randolph’s attitude wasn’t helping the situation. He looked pissed off and was still somewhat drunk.

“What are you going to do with them?” I asked.

“It’s late,” he said. “I’ll process them in the morning.” “You should at least question them and see if they want out now that the bartender isn’t in their face. That girl, the one holding the stuffed bear, seems really scared.”

Exasperated, Randolph told the Bulgarian to escort her to a nearby office for questioning. Another officer appeared and asked the other girls if they spoke any other languages. A plump Moldovan named Maria said she spoke French. My ears perked up. I speak French. I introduced myself and asked that she accompany me to an interview room on the floor below.

Maria had been working at the Playboy for four months. Her salary was about $100 a month, and she sent the money to her parents, two younger sisters and a brother back home.

“Do your parents know what you do for a living?” I asked. “They think I am a waitress,” she said, looking at her platform shoes. “I think they know.”

“Do you want to go back home?”

“To what? My family will starve to death if I don’t send them this money. There is no work, no jobs in Moldova. There is only poverty.”

Maria was from the town of Rocovat near the border of Ukraine. When she left Moldova she was told by a job recruiter she would be cleaning rooms at a hotel in Greece. She’d heard about the trafficking of young women, but it never occurred to her that she’d ever be recruited for the sex trade.

“I had heard about the stories of prostitution. But look at me. I am not beautiful. I am fat,” she said, lifting up her blouse to reveal a roll of flesh. She didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed. “I believed I would be cleaning rooms. Instead, I was taken to an apartment in Belgrade and told I was to work as a prostitute.”

She said the men who held her captive in Belgrade had her stand naked for hours in front of potential buyers. No one was interested in purchasing her. Over the course of several weeks the owners fed her very little, hoping she would lose weight. They threatened that if she didn’t get bought, they would sell her by the kilogram for her organs. In the end, Maria was sold for chump change and smuggled over the mountains to Ferrazaj.

I switched the topic. “What happened to the two Romanian girls?”

Maria tensed up. “They left.”

“When?”

“Two days ago.”

“A Romanian girl escaped from the bar earlier today. Did you know her?”

“Tina.”

“She told the police in Pristina that two Romanian girls were being held at the bar.”

Maria didn’t respond.

“The two girls wouldn’t happen to be the Romanians in the other room?”

“No. I told you, they left. I think maybe a day ago.”

“It’s interesting how the story of when they supposedly left keeps changing depending on who we talk to. Two weeks ago, a week, two days, a day.”

Maria shrugged her shoulders and smiled meekly. She knew I knew she was lying, but there was no way she was going to come clean.

“The men who come into the bar—are they all locals?” I asked.

“No. Sometimes soldiers. Sometimes foreign police.”

“Do they pay?”

“The police never pay.”

“Are you sure I can’t help you? I could make certain you get out of here.”

Her eyes welling with tears, Maria stared down at the floor and shook her head frantically. “I cannot leave. It is too late for me. My family needs the money. Without it, they will perish.”

I left Maria sitting alone with her thoughts and headed for the office upstairs. As I neared it, I could hear the Bulgarian translating for Randolph. The girls sitting in the room next door, I realized, could hear everything being said.

Randolph was sitting on a wooden chair with his feet up on the metal desk examining the girl’s Romanian passport with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers. He was trying to determine if the document had been altered or forged. I asked if I could see it. He tossed it over. The picture was of a timid, happy nineteen-year-old named Svetlana. It had been taken two years earlier. A warm smile radiated from a round, innocent face and her eyes sparkled with the excitement of youth. A frilly blouse was buttoned up to her neck. But the young woman in the police station was no longer this person. Her eyes were hard and cynical, and when she smiled it was all part of the con. She was dressed like a cheap hooker. Her lips and fingers were painted bright cherry red. Her skirt barely covered her see-through underwear and the beige satin camisole left little to the imagination. Sitting there on a metal chair in the middle of the room, she was on display and it clearly made her uncomfortable. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her chest and she frequently pulled at her skirt in a futile attempt to hide her bare thighs.

Randolph was in preacher mode, trying to persuade the girl to change her evil ways and telling her how devastated he would be as a father to find out that this was what his teenage daughter was doing for a living. Svetlana just stared at the tiny brown teddy bear clutched in her hand.

In disbelief, I glanced over at Chappell, who looked deeply troubled.

“This is not the proper way to do this kind of interview,” he whispered. “These girls should have been separated immediately and the interviews carried out in a quiet and calm manner. This girl is afraid and it’s obvious she doesn’t trust the police.”

“With good reason,” I noted.

“Do you want to go home?” the Bulgarian asked. “We can send you home.”

Svetlana shrugged. She looked up at the officer, and for a fleeting moment she appeared to nod yes.

I stared at her for the longest time. The look in her dark eyes seemed to scream in pain. I was sure she was one of the girls who wanted out. My gaze shifted to the furry bear in her hand. Then I noticed a gauze bandage covering her left wrist. Along both her arms were the telltale scars of cigarette burns. Clearly, she had been tortured.

“Ask her about the injury to her wrist,” I said to the Bulgarian cop.

“She said she burned herself by mistake.”

“Ask about the scars on her arms. Ask if they came from cigarettes.”

Svetlana pulled her arms tightly around her body and stared silently ahead.

Randolph piped up. “Do you want to go home? Yes or no!” Again, Svetlana said nothing. She was tense and looked as though she was about to cry.

“It’s late. Almost 3 a.m. and I’m tired. I’m going home,” Randolph announced.

“What’s going to happen to the girls?” I asked.

“I’ll deal with them in the morning. I need some sleep.” When Svetlana joined the others she was greeted by icy glares. Then Ponza, the Italian police officer, showed up with a bag of clothes from the bar: sweatpants, sweaters and wind-breakers. The girls jumped up and thanked her. They changed quickly, and the transformation was remarkable. They looked like ordinary young women.

I left Kosovo the next day. Chappell drove me to the Macedonian border and I headed for the airport outside Skopje. He told me he would look into the aborted raids and let me know what he found out.

AT UNMIK police headquarters in Pristina, Chappell searched for the “flash report” from the Ferrazaj police station on the Playboy raid. Surprisingly, there was none. There was no record, no mention anywhere that the raid had even taken place. When he tried to get some answers, he hit a stone wall.

A week later I phoned him from Toronto for an update. He was upset and said he was filing a complaint with Internal Affairs about the entire incident. He asked if I would do the same, and I agreed.

A few days later Chappell emailed me a copy of his complaint.

Most important, he wanted to know what happened to the women who were removed from the bar. After he’d made several inquiries, no requests were made to headquarters to assist the women. “This raid appears to have ‘disappeared’ officially.”

I emailed Chappell my affidavit the next day, which he forwarded to Internal Affairs. He asked if I’d be willing to be interviewed by Internal Affairs. I said I had no problem with that. No one ever contacted me.

On October 21, Chappell sent me an update by email.

“I prepared a full report on the events of Oct. 4th and summarized my conclusions and suspicions. I presented the report to the Commissioner who created a special investigative team to look into all of the questions I raised,” he wrote, adding that the UN police conducted raids on the Playboy and the Mega Bar that past weekend.

“We found ten women—including four at the Playboy Club from the previous week when we were there. At the Mega

Bar there was one room set up as a barracks with bunk beds around the walls where the women slept until needed for sex. No sign of Svetlana yet. Can’t really say any more now.”

Two weeks later, Chappell emailed another update. “I cannot find any trace of Svetlana,” he began. Then he sent up a red flare.

On December 17, 2001, I phoned Chappell. He sounded as though he’d been through the rinse cycle. “The hassles we created needed to be created,” he said. “We shook things up, but having said that, the pressure is on to quiet things down. John is no longer with the prostitution unit. That is the only major accomplishment in this entire debacle. No one has been disciplined. No one has been sent home. And Svetlana is lost.”

Chappell also revealed that he had met privately with an American Internal Affairs officer. The conversation left him rattled. “He’s a pretty straight guy. He let it slip that ‘we found something a lot worse’ and then clammed up. I was told the Americans called off the raid because of a sudden request to provide protective services to local Serbs. That I know was an outright lie. When we got there, and you know that, the Ukrainian commander was with all his men waiting to move.”

I managed to reach Chappell by phone on January 25, 2002. He had more intelligence to share.

Chappell promised to follow up with a detailed email, which he did on February 28. He’d been digging in dark recesses and gathering intelligence from a various sources, and had emerged with a disquieting lesson in geopolitics.

Chappell went on to suggest that certain criminal operations in the south of Kosovo conducted by UCK fighters were being protected by the Americans in exchange for intelligence and an agreement from Kosovar fighters not to start a war with Macedonia.

“It would not surprise me if the prostitution activity is included,” he wrote.

I didn’t hear a word from him for several months. Then, on June 14, 2002, I called to check up on him. The conversation was terse.

“Everything has really come to a dead end,” he said. “With the rotation almost all of the KFOR troops that were there last October are gone now. But the interesting thing is that the situation appears to be the same. So it doesn’t seem to be something unique to that particular brigade or unit. It’s almost as though that’s policy, no matter who is there.”

Chappell lamented that although he had tried his best to track down what he could, “there’s just nowhere else to go with it. That’s part of the problem when you try to do an inquiry— people rotate every six or seven or eight months.”

The trail had hit quicksand.

Sadly, Chappell said he’d learned that Svetlana had been resold to a brothel somewhere in Bosnia.

GORDON MOON, the Canadian police officer who set up the first Trafficking in Prostitution Investigation Unit in Kosovo, was upset when I recounted my experience in Ferrazaj. He said that while his unit conducted raids on brothels and bars throughout the renegade province, there was one area where the bars were basically hands off—Ferrazaj and Gnjilane in the American-controlled sector.

Moon said he had ventured into the region a number of times and was appalled at what he saw. “I mean, the bars just flourished everywhere and, let me put it this way, tons of Americans in them, which kind of surprised me because the international community was supposed to be there to aid and to help people, and in turn they were fueling this prostitution and trafficking problem.”

WHEN THE U.S. MILITARY effectively condones the soliciting of trafficked women overseas, it seriously undermines the efforts of the U.S. government in its anti-trafficking work. American soldiers, purportedly fighting for freedom throughout the world, are engaging in an offensive activity that represses innocent women and girls and aids criminals in making a profit. As long as this situation is allowed to continue, and as long as its citizens board planes on sex tours, the United States’ ranking should be downgraded to Tier Three—with all the international embarrassment and disgrace that comes with it.