Sex Slavery and Murder in the Netherlands

Book Review

Slave Girl 

by Sarah Forsyth and Tim Tate

by cathyfox

"How can biro marks, scratched on a piece of plain white paper ever convey the horror of watching the face of a fellow human being, blown to pieces a few feet from your own?" Sarah asks.

It was after this  horrific incident that Sarah knew she had to escape. Her chance happened one day when the room she was usually locked in was left unlocked and the two huge bull mastiffs that usually guarded her were not there. She ran and ran and ran.

Sarah had been tricked into going to the Netherlands to be a nursery nurse. There was no job, she was met by "Sally" who turned her over to John Reece, who kidnapped her and her put to work as a prostitute, leading to a nightmare of rape and drug addiction. She was then sold to a bigger group of pimps.

Men get bored with paying for "normal" commercialised sex. Rich men can pay for spiced up sex. This leads to russian roulette, which is how Sarah witnessed the death of young peasant Thai girl Par. Filming it earns more money as a snuff movie. It also has the benefit of getting rid of a low earning prostitute. And it keeps the dogs fed.

Before this horrific experience in the Netherlands, Sarah had been sexually abused as a child by her father.

Tim Tate and Sarah tell the story of her life of sexual abuse and sex trafficking in this book. This is a very courageous decision by Sarah.  As a self described crack whore, who became addicted to morphine given to her to get off the crack, and sufferer of  post traumatic stress disorder sufferer, not only will her often incredible claims be doubted but she is bound to be the subject of intense scrutiny when things go wrong [8].

Add to this "Sally" emerges on a website to dispute some of Sarahs version [6]. Personally I trust Tim Tate's integrity, who continues his quality writing into child sex abuse, and trying to bring peoples attention to it for many years when only a handful of people were covering it. Whether the story is absolutely true is to miss the point. Sex trafficking, child sex trafficking and forced prostitution does happen and on a much greater scale than we care to believe as this article from 2007 shows [13] . The Poppy Project for survivors of sex trafficking already knows only too well [4].

Unfortunately for whatever reason Police have been slow to take sexual exploitation crimes with due seriousmess. Although Police declared Operation Pentameter into sex traffficking a success [10] , it received criticism in the press [10]. Graham Maxwell was Deputy Chief of South Yorkshire Police and Programme Director at UK Human Trafficking Centre at Sheffield. Rotherham, now infamous for its ignored child sex exploitation is South Yorkshire Police area. Maxwell later left the Police in disgrace over a different issue [16]. The UK Human Trafficking Centre has now been taken over by the National Crime Agency [NCA] [17]. Time will tell if this is an improvement, but the NCA are not even bound by the Freedom of Information Act.

Woman trafficking and forced prostitution on redlight destrict ''de wallen'' in the Netherlands


I look forward to reading Sarahs next book - Slave Girl - Return to Hell: Ordinary British girls are being sold into sex slavery; I escaped, but now I'm going to help free them. This is my true story [18]


[1] 2009 Slave Girl Sarah Forsyth and Tim Tate  ISBN 978 1 84454 685 5