Escape from a life as a sex slave in Amsterdam
NURSERY NURSE TELLS HOW SHE WAS KIDNAPPED AT GUNPOINT AND FORCED INTO PROSTITUTION
A GATESHEAD nursery nurse who was kidnapped in Amsterdam and sold as a sex slave has spoken of her horrific ordeal.
Sarah Forsyth was 19 when she was abducted at gunpoint and catapulted into the red-light district’s brutal underground sex trade.
Locked up in a brothel, she was made to have sex with hundreds of different men and was fed a diet of M&Ms and cocaine.
Speaking to the Mirror, the now 42-year-old revealed she is still haunted by the terrifying ordeal and was forced to watch another girl be murdered.
Sarah said that the young Thai girl had not made enough money for the pimps who were angry and decided that they would make an example of her by shooting her dead.
She said: “As the noise registered in my ears, she dropped to the floor beside my feet.
“I wanted to scream but although my mouth opened my throat was constricted with terror. I couldn’t make a sound.
“Then I saw the little red lights on the cameras and heard the soft grinding of the tapes and I realised her killing was being filmed.
“I see her often in my dreams – my nightmares. I see again the look of uncomprehending panic in her eyes as the man raises the gun.
“I even hear clearly through the ensuing silence the sound of a single empty cartridge clattering on the stone floor of the warehouse.”
Sarah travelled to Amsterdam in the mid 1990s believing she was starting at a local nursery after following up an ad that had been placed in a newspaper.
However, the job didn’t exist and the ad had actually been placed by now-convicted criminal John Reece, who met her at Schiphol Airport and pressed a gun to her mouth.
She said that the pimps got her addicted to cocaine and played Russian roulette with a loaded revolver with her as a source of entertainment.
But during these sadistic games, Sarah said that she hoped the gun would fire as she wanted to die.
She told the Mirror: “Each time I brought the revolver up to my head and the trigger clicked on an empty chamber I felt cheated.
“Why did the gun not fire, emptying its little load of lead into my temple? “Why couldn’t I have the blessed relief of instant death?”
Sarah explained that the Thai girl had been killed to make a ‘snuff porn’ movie where a dead body was needed. When she learned of this, she knew she had to get out and finally managed to escape in 1997 into Belgium before returning to Gateshead.
Sarah gave evidence against her abusers. Five pleaded guilty to abusing her and other trafficked girls in a Dutch court – but bizarre anonymity laws meant she was not told their names or how long they were jailed for.
She also gave evidence against her original captor Reece when he was tried at Leicester Crown Court.
In 1997, he was found guilty of two counts of causing prostitution and one of living off immoral earnings but got just two years behind bars.
Sarah struggled to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and battled with drug addiction for a decade as she tried to drown out the horrific memories.
Her memoir, Slave Girl, details her appalling experience in Amsterdam and is being reissued this month.
■ Slave Girl by Sarah Forsyth – John Blake Publishing – £8.99
I see her often in my dreams – my nightmares. I see again the look of uncomprehending panic in her eyes. Sarah Forsyth