MODELLING DREAM

A WOMAN has told of her 10 years of hell working as a £120-an-hour sex slave.

Pretty Helena was living in poverty in Romania when family “acquaintances” offered her a career as a model in the UK.

They flew the 20-year-old to London and put her up in a flat.

But after making her pose for sexy bikini and underwear pictures for her “portfolio”, they told her there were no job offers – and secretly put the snaps on a sex website.

Helena was then hit with a £3,000 bill for her flight and the photos, plus rent for the flat.

The gang told her there was one way she could pay it off by giving massages.

In fact, she was put to work in a “pop-up” brothel that would become her prison for the next decade.

She was forced into a brutal world of vice and drugs – and told that if she didn’t comply, her family would be killed.

Reliving her ordeal, Helena told the Daily Star Sunday: “I was promised a dream and ended up living a nightmare. They trapped me and I couldn’t get out.

“My life in Romania was hard but that was nothing compared to what I’ve had to go through in the last 10 years. It’s been hell.”

Helena lived with her family in a small village in the eastern European country when she was offered the escape route to the UK.

She said: “Someone who knew our family told me I was pretty and could make it in the modelling world.

“He said there was no chance I could do it in Romania but that he could use his connections to get me a modelling contract in England.

“I was only 20 and I didn’t want to be struggling or to see my family struggle, so I jumped at the chance.

“I thought it was a chance to start a new life.”

The man paid for her flight and accommodation, and arranged for her “landlord” to meet her in the UK.

She said: “I was taken to a flat where there were another three girls. I was told the rent would be 500 euros a week.

“They said don’t worry about the price because I would be getting lots of work and could pay for it that way.

“The second day they took me to a photo shoot and gave me a bikini and knickers and bra to wear.

“I was really nervous. I didn’t expect that at all. I went back to the guy and I told him that I wasn’t feeling comfortable.

“He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to give you something that will make you feel much better’.

“He gave me a pill that he said would make me feel relaxed. I was only 20 and I was scared and naive. I took it because I didn’t think anything bad was going to happen to me. I thought they were trying to help me.”

After the shoot, the men told Helena she would have to pay 1,000 euros for her flights and more than 2,000 euros for the portfolio.

They then put the pictures on a prostitution website, along with a price list for sex acts.

Helena, now 30, said: “The landlord... told me they had got me a job as a massage therapist. He said I could earn 500 euros a night and be able to pay off the loan.

“All I had to do was give massages to men. He said he’d take my documents until I’d finished paying off the loan.

“On my first night I was taken to a room upstairs in the house I lived in.

“I was nervous. The man gave me some white powder and told me to sniff it as it would relax me. Then the first guy came and basically he had sex with me. After that I was feeling very bad because it wasn’t what I was expecting. I told them I wouldn’t do that again. That’s when they started blackmailing me.

“They said if I didn’t do what they said and pay off my debt they would kill all of my family in Romania.”

Helena was given cocaine every day until she became hooked – sparking an £80-a-day habit to add to her crippling debts. Any money she earned was pocketed by the gang.

She said: “They even withheld my budget for toiletries. I had nothing. Yet every night I would have to have sex with strangers. People were paying 150 euros an hour for some services. I had no choice but to give them what they wanted. They were mostly British men.”

Helena was finally saved when an English client with underworld links came to her aid, and her Romanian gang masters let her go last year.

But thousands more women are still enslaved and being forced to work in “pop-up brothels”. Almost 40% of trafficked women in the UK are Romanian, according to the Global Sex Trade’s report on organised sexual exploitation.

At least three quarters of all “pop-up” brothel prostitutes in the UK are Romanian.

‘They said they would kill my family in Romania if I didn’t do everything the clients wanted’