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Shelter For The Vulnerable | This summer volunteer Mila Luchak helped build the safe house in Stoyaniv, Ukraine.

Olenka is a prostitute. She services up to 15 men a day, and eats and sleeps in the same dim room in which she works. She hands over all of her earnings to her pimp, often upwards of $700 a day, under threats of beatings and death. She isn’t allowed outside, she has no control over the sexual acts she performs, and in the six months she’s been “working,” she figures she’s been raped more than 1,800 times.

Olenka is a prostitute, but not by choice. She is one of 800,000 women who are trafficked in the global sex trade every year, duped into prostitution by wily recruiters and delivered into the hands of unscrupulous pimps in cities as diverse as Moscow and Madrid, London and Las Vegas, Edinburgh and Edmonton.

Yes, Edmonton. Last month, two people were arrested on human trafficking charges at a west end massage parlour. A third was charged with living on the avails of prostitution. And three women, two from Fiji and one from Beijing, were rescued from a life in which, police believe, they were forced to service men around the clock, and were kept in the rooms they worked in. Police also say the women were lured into the work with the promise of legitimate jobs in Edmonton.

“It’s a familiar story,” says CTV W-FIVE reporter Victor Malarek, who has written widely about sex trafficking in his books The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade (which included Olenka’s story) and most recently, The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It. Malarek is in town this week as part of a fundraising effort in support of a safe house for women recovering from their involvement in the global sex trade, as well as vulnerable young people in Stoyaniv, Ukraine.

“International women are a hot commodity in the western sex trade,” Malarek says, “and pimps are hungry for fresh flesh and will pay recruiters top dollar for it.”

Many of these women come from the world’s poorest countries in Africa, Asia, and South America, as well as former Soviet states like Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine. According to the U.S. State Department’s 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report, there has been an explosion of human trafficking cases worldwide, with sex trafficking netting the third-highest payoff in organized crime, after drugs and weapons. The women (and boys) are often very young and very naïve, and believe they’re escaping the poverty, corruption, and political instability of their homelands for lucrative jobs in the west.

But the reality of their lives once they arrive is quite different, and the women tell harrowing tales. “They are often beaten, raped, and tortured,” Malarek says. “They are nothing but an orifice with breasts, and many die or commit suicide before they can escape. And in many instances, the very men who should be protecting them — police officers, government officials, international peacekeepers — are the ones who are abusing them.”

And with the recent arrests in Edmonton, it’s clear that this issue touches not just far-off cities and countries with dubious records of human rights offences, but our own communities as well. The Canadian government has recently issued posters to be displayed in airports and other public spaces to raise awareness about human trafficking and the victims who may be smuggled into Canada.

But Malarek says that there is little the general public can do about it. “For one thing,” he says, “the women are largely kept hidden away in massage parlours or sex clubs. They have very little interaction with the general population, and those they do interact with, the pimps and johns, are not likely to help them. Much of the moral onus is placed on johns, who have a questionable moral compass to begin with, to make reports to the police if they feel something is amiss. So to all those johns out there, please phone Crimestoppers if you think a girl is not working on her own accord.”

There are Edmontonians, however, who are helping to make a difference in the in the global sex trade. Maple Leaf Alberta Projects is a group of concerned Edmontonians who are working to build a support network for trafficked women in Ukraine — and to try to save young women from trafficking in the first place. The organization is currently raising funds to build a safe house for women and girls in Stoyaniv.

“Due to rampant unemployment and an unstable and corrupt political system and economy, women in this area are especially vulnerable,” says group co-chair Pauline Lysak. “Many children are abandoned in orphanages because their parents can’t afford to take care of them. And unfortunately, the orphanage system in the Ukraine is only able to shelter children until they’re 16. After that, many teens are quite literally left in the cold. They have very few life skills, and in many instances, their only options are to answer ads or be recruited for work in the West.” That work, of course, may or may not be legitimate.

“Our safe house is a place for young women to go, to learn skills to help them find work at home,” Lysak says. “Or to find legitimate jobs abroad.”

The safe house is also a place for women who have been rescued from trafficking to try to rebuild their lives.

“It’s just the most amazing project,” beams Mila Luchak, a 20-year-old University of Alberta student who spent her summer in Ukraine, helping to build the safe house. “It really hits home because many of these women are my age. But their lives are so different. I’m so happy to be able to do something, something very concrete, that will make a difference in their lives.”

Malarek, who has seen the problem first-hand, approves whole-heartedly of their efforts. However, he says the only solution to the trade in human flesh lies in simple economics: supply and demand. “There are three little letters in the word demand, and they spell out the problem: M-A-N. If there was no demand, there’d be no need for a supply. Men who use these women are responsible for this issue, and it’s time for men to face up to their responsibility to put a stop to using and abusing women in the sex trade.”

There may be a keen difference between women who are willing participants in the sex industry versus those who are not. But for women like Olenka, the global sex trade has horrific and lasting effects not limited to the sale of their bodies. “That these women should be considered criminally responsible for their actions is a cruel and ridiculous joke,” Malarek says. He argues that greater responsibility should be placed on the shoulders of the men who use prostitutes (willing or not), and that the women should not bear the brunt of the criminal and social stigma.

“Decriminalize the women,” he says. “And criminalize the users. It’s the only way to stop this form of modern slavery.”

Victor Malarek will be speaking at St. Andrew’s Cultural Centre on Oct. 18. Tickets are $25. All proceeds go to the Klenovi-Lyst Safe House in the Ukraine. Tickets are available at 780-434-4826.