For more than 20 years, British girls have been lured by the supposed good life on the Costa del Sol. Naïve youngsters all too often set out for the sunshine coast looking for fun, adventure and romance. Many even dream about settling down to a glamorous lifestyle with a glittering career a million miles away from the dole queues and freezing temperatures of the UK. But for one such girl, those dreams fell cruelly apart when she became entrapped in a den of depravity from which there was no escape. Her story should stand as a grim warning to any others planning a similar move to the Costa del Sol.
Tracey Rose’s decision to turn her life around and move to southern Spain was greeted with great indifference by her family back in Luton, Bedfordshire, in the heart of Middle England. ‘Why don’t you get a proper job?’ asked her father, just moments after 22-year-old Tracey announced she’d taken a job as a Marbella timeshare salesperson.
‘I need a bit of adventure before I settle down, Dad,’ replied Tracey. ‘Is that such a sin?’
Her father didn’t reply.
But within a couple of weeks of arriving on the Costa del Sol, the pretty university graduate began to regret her bold statement. Her job selling shares in apartments entailed a hell of a lot more persuasion of clients than Tracey had ever imagined. Some of the other girls she met working on the same job unsubtly suggested the only way to make a definite sale and earn some decent commission was to sleep with male clients.
Tracey was appalled at the prospect and, after fruitlessly trying to prove her point by getting a ‘straight’ sale without any sexual enticement, she quit in disgust. But the job had come with a free apartment and that meant she was now out on the streets with only a few hundred pounds in savings and a handful of phone numbers of recent friends and acquaintances.
However, Tracey’s stubborn pride prevented her from returning home. She had a point to prove to her family and she was determined not to give up at the first hurdle. So she checked into a cheap hotel in the old quarter of the resort of Estepona and began looking for work. It wasn’t as easy as she initially thought. She spoke no Spanish, and there had been a recent local backlash against employing anyone with an English accent. ‘They said that Brits were nothing but trouble,’ Tracey later recalled. ‘And in some ways I could see what they meant. Everywhere I looked were drunken Brits behaving like hooligans. No wonder we have such a bad reputation abroad.’
The following night, down on her luck and feeling very sorry for herself, Tracey arranged to meet a girlfriend from her former timeshare job for a drink in the picturesque marina area of Estepona. It was a steaming hot evening and thousands of revellers packed the narrow streets, pouring in and out of the numerous bars and clubs. Tracey’s friend never showed up that night, but she enjoyed a few drinks and tried to forget all about her troubles by chatting to a charming Arabic man from one of the big yachts in the harbour.
By midnight, Tracey and her new friend, who called himself Ali, had been joined by a couple of South American girls. Tracey found them a little too forward for her liking. She reckoned they might have been high-class hookers, rumoured by many to wander in and out of the Estepona port bars looking for rich punters. But with the sangria flowing and everyone in high spirits, Tracey didn’t think twice when Ali suggested all the girls might like to come aboard his yacht for a nightcap. What could possibly happen? There were three of them and only one of him, after all…
As the party stumbled up the gangplank to the vast 120-foot yacht with its whirling radar scanner and huge satellite-TV dish, Tracey took off her black stilettos after Ali said the heels might damage the wooden deck. That was the last she could remember of the evening: she woke up the next morning to find herself tied to a bed and stripped of her clothes. There was a gag across her mouth; she felt a slight breeze run across her naked body.
‘I thought I was dreaming,’ she later remembered. ‘I shut my eyes tightly and then opened them slowly once again in the hope it was all a nightmare. But I was still there. There was a slight rocking sensation and it was only then I realised I was still on the yacht and that it was out at sea.’
At that moment two men walked into the room. One of them was the man who called himself Ali. Tracey shut her eyes tightly and listened, hoping they would think she was still asleep. The other man was an older Arab in a headdress and flowing white robes. She opened her eyes ever so slightly and noticed that he was at least 60 years of age.
Tracey prayed they’d think she was still unconscious because she needed time to work out how to get away. The two men were having a heated conversation in Arabic. Suddenly the older man began prodding Ali in the shoulder angrily. Ali then stormed out of the room. The man turned and started walking towards Tracey, smiling. ‘Why you pretend to be asleep?’ he asked. ‘I see your eyes open.’
At first, Tracey didn’t stir in the hope he would go away. The Arab sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand slowly up the outside of her naked thigh. Tracey felt the goosebumps on her flesh start popping. ‘Come on. Wake up. It’s time,’ said the old man. His hand stopped at the top of her thigh and he grabbed her flesh hard and squeezed. Tracey winced and her eyes snapped open angrily. He looked down at her and smiled, exposing a crooked set of yellowing teeth.
As she struggled against the ropes around her wrist and ankles, they tightened with every movement. Then the man’s hand moved to her face and he ran a finger across the black silk gag and along her top lip. It tickled in a nasty kind of way. Tracey began to shake with a combination of fear and awkwardness. She couldn’t talk because of the scarf gagging her. ‘You’re a beautiful creature,’ he muttered as his eyes hungrily panned up and down her body.
Tracey began struggling even harder against the restraints. She wanted him to know she was not about to give up without a fight. But she felt horribly vulnerable, lying there naked. He pulled at her hair and then pushed her forward while he undid the gag.
Tracey spluttered for breath. ‘You bastard! Let me go.’ She spat the words out contemptuously. He seemed encouraged by her outburst.
‘You have much energy, English girl. That’s good.’ Then he bent down and tried to kiss her ear. She turned and tried to bite him hard. He reacted furiously and hit her across the face with the back of his hand. ‘Bitch! You pay for that…’
Three hours later, the man finally left the room. Tracey’s entire face was horribly bitten and bruised. She was crying. Then the younger man from the bar, Ali, entered. He seemed genuinely concerned. ‘I’m sorry if he hurt you…’
‘Please, let me go,’ she screamed through her tears.
‘I cannot do that yet. We want you to stay for more time.’
‘You’ll have to kill me first,’ Tracey told Ali defiantly.
He sat down at the end of the bed and quietly told her that her drinks had been deliberately drugged earlier in the bar. She was now their prisoner. ‘You’ll survive if you co-operate, and you will be paid well.’
‘I don’t want your money. Just take me back to the shore, please,’ begged Tracey, but she knew in her heart of hearts that it wasn’t going to happen. She was being held captive and they could do whatever they liked to her.
Later that day, the older Arab returned and carried out another horrible sexual assault on her. As he lay on top of her, Tracey turned her head to one side, sobbed quietly and prayed that it would all end soon. ‘I wanted to die at that moment,’ she later recalled. ‘There seemed no other means of escape.’
Tracey Rose’s ordeal went on for three more agonising days. At times she tried to fight back, but she eventually became resigned to her fate, acknowledging that it was probably the key to her survival. Eventually the old Arab grew bored of her and she was dropped back at Estepona port. Ali gave her €5,000. She tried to throw it back at him, but he said, ‘Take it. It’ll help you. It’s tough out there.’
‘I’m not a prostitute,’ she screamed at him. ‘I don’t sleep with men for money.’
‘That’s unimportant,’ said Ali. ‘If
you don’t take the money he’ll want you back again.’
Tracey hated herself for it, but she kept the cash. She felt that Ali did have some sympathy for her. She went back to her hotel that day, showered, cried, ate and then cried again. She even tried to burn the notes but had to stop when the smoke set off a fire alarm. ‘I hated myself even more than I hated them. But I didn’t know what to do, or who to tell,’ she explained.
Tracey eventually found herself a ‘normal’ job as a barmaid 30 miles east of Estepona. ‘I wanted to get as far away from there as possible,’ she later recalled. She still has slight scars on her wrists where the ropes burned through her skin and admits that’s she’s unlikely ever to recover fully from her horrific ordeal.
Then, almost six months after the appalling assault, Tracey got a painful reminder of what had happened. ‘I bumped into those same two South American girls who were with me when that man Ali drugged my drink. They even asked how I was, although they made no reference to what had happened. I was astounded. It was almost as if they just thought it was no big deal. Of course, I don’t know for certain that those girls were involved in my kidnap, but I think they must have known what had happened, surely?
‘But you know what one of them said to me? She dropped a hint that I could earn some big money if I wanted to be a prostitute on the side. “You’d earn a lot of money because the Arabs love English girls like you.” I looked completely aghast at them and ran off in tears. I just don’t know how they could be so heartless. Maybe they’d just become hardened to it all because of how they earned a living. I actually feel very sorry for girls like that because they’ve lost all compassion and self-respect. It’s as if it’s been beaten out of them. It’s a terrible way to end up, isn’t it?’
These days, Tracey says she’s enjoying a simple existence working hard in the bar. ‘I’m saving as much money as possible so I can get home in time for my granny’s seventieth birthday next year. In some ways I don’t know why I stayed on here in Spain after what happened, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could handle it. My parents would be so shocked if I told them, but I never will.
‘It’s strange the way things have turned out. Those three or four days on the yacht were a living nightmare I shall never forget, and that awful experience numbed me about everything else. I just don’t think about the same sort of things any more. I have a life to live. I suppose I’m lucky I never became a prostitute. It must be so easy to just think, “What the hell,” after going through something like that.
‘It seems to me that there are only two types of people in this world – the givers and the takers. No wonder those girls don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves…’
CHAPTER TEN
CHAIN OF EVIL
One of the vice girls involved in the vile trade of young women
CHAIN OF EVIL
Mafia-style gangs based on the Costa del Sol have been using Bosnia as a marketplace for girls, many of whom are smuggled into Spain and then forced into a life of prostitution. My investigations along the Spanish coastline have uncovered links between crooked officials in Bosnia and a network of sex slaves organised by major criminals, including Britons, in Spain.
Over the past two years, a notorious Glasgow villain known on the Costa del Sol as ‘Jimmy’ has made a small fortune importing women as sex slaves from Bosnia after greasing the palms of certain members of international organisations. Jimmy boasted to me recently, ‘Bosnia’s in chaos, and Spain has more brothels then just about any other country in Europe, so it’s an obvious destination for these girls. They have a better life over here than they would ever have back in Bosnia.’
But it’s the international connection that really worries Spanish police, and European politicians and peacekeepers alike. As one UN official explained, ‘We’re supposed to be cracking down on the sex-slave trade and the suffering of these people, not watching it being encouraged.’
Girls as young as 15 have been illegally shipped out of Bosnia and forced to work as prostitutes on the Costa del Sol. But Jimmy, a former Glagow hardman, denies any of the girls he ‘handles’ are underage and he is immensely proud of his international connections. He claims that international personnel have been involved in the vice business since as far back as the mid-1990s. ‘These fellas in Bosnia used the brothels there from the moment they moved in. A couple of them got caught in what you’d call compromising situations, and now they’re in the pocket of the local mafia. They’ve got them by the goolies, which means no one will stop these girls being shipped out to Spain.’
In late 2000, a female human-rights investigator was fired shortly after trying to expose the Bosnian vice ring. Kathryn Bolkovac claimed that women were forced to dance naked in Bosnian bars frequented by UN police officers. Her account turned out to be the tip of the iceberg: it has now emerged that some officials had already forged links with the local mafia, and they’ve been making vast sums of cash by ‘nodding through’ shiploads of girls travelling out of Bosnia.
As one of Jimmy’s associates, a south Londoner called Terry, told me, ‘Jimmy can get whatever he wants in Bosnia. They provide a guarantee for the girls to get out of Bosnia in the first place.’
At one Costa del Sol brothel near Malaga Airport, a Bosnian teenager called Naomi, who claims to be 18, openly admits how she was brought to Spain. ‘The travel documents were obtained through a man who owns a nightclub near my home in Bosnia. Then they handed me over to this British guy and he brought me to this place. I cannot leave for at least six months until I’ve paid off my airfare and rent to stay here. I need to earn a lot of money to send back to my family and to pay for me to go to university.’
Naomi’s brunette friend Julia, 19, says she hates working in the brothel and wants to go back to her family in Bosnia. ‘But they’ve trapped me here until I’ve paid off all my debts. It disgusts me to go with these men, but I have no choice.’
Both girls blame the international organisations for their predicament. ‘They are no better than the local police. They come into our country to give us peace, but instead we end up being forced to have sex with men in a foreign country away from our families. We hate them,’ says Naomi.
One of the alleged middlemen between the crooked officials in Bosnia and the criminals of the Costa del Sol is another Briton called Patrick. He is also proud of his connections with the international organisations. ‘They’re cool guys. They know what the score is and that prostitution is no big deal here in Spain or over in Bosnia. The girls earn good money, so what’s the problem?’
Others might disagree. Señor Jorge Santiago of the Costa del Sol’s Guardia Civil police force says, ‘These men are involved in smuggling women to Spain, many against their will. There is no other way to describe it. The brothel keepers are encouraging some bad people to make money out of the misery of women. It disgusts me.’
Bosnia itself is full of so-called ‘girly bars’ frequented by UN policemen. ‘These places are like a showcase for the girls. When they’re spotted, they are forced to work as prostitutes abroad,’ says one visitor to Bosnia.
In December 2000, Kathryn Bolkovac sent an email to Jacques Paul Klein, the chief of the UN mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, highlighting the sexual exploitation of women by those who had been sent to protect them from the sex trade in the first place. Mrs Bolkovac also claimed that many women and underage girls were handed over to bar owners and told to perform sex acts to pay for their costumes in those brothels and bars. But even worse, Mrs Bolkovac stated, ‘The women who refused were locked in rooms and withheld food and outside contact for days or weeks. After this time they were told to dance naked on tabletops and sit with clients. If the women still refused to perform sex acts with the customers they are beaten and raped in the rooms by the bar owners and their associates. They’re told if they go to the police they will be arrested for prostitution and being an illegal immigrant.’
Back in the Costa del Sol, sex-slave trafficker Jimmy claims
he has paid thousands of pounds in bribes for officials to issue travel documents to the girls so that they can be shipped out to Spain and a life of vice. ‘Having international organisations running things over there is perfect for us because then things get done real quick.’
Meanwhile, Naomi and Julia at the brothel near Malaga Airport continue working from 6pm to 6am, servicing up to ten men a night. ‘I want to go back to my family but the men here say that I have to first earn the money to pay for my crossing and papers through the international organisations,’ says Julia. ‘We are always being told how good they are for us. Well, try telling that to the Bosnian girls who’ve ended up in these brothels.’
Yet despite all the evidence, some senior UN officials still continue to play down the situation. One spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said recently, ‘I don’t think anyone should be too surprised that out of many thousands of international personnel a bunch of them should get up to naughty tricks. It happens in every war – it’s just sad that they are wearing blue berets.’
One senior Bosnian policeman summed up the situation when he said, ‘This is a pitiful thing. It is a pitiful life. You should tell the world we never lived like this before, and I hope we never will again.’
But as Jimmy explained, ‘There will always be someone prepared to take a bribe, and there’s always a load of men who want sex with these girls. I call it supply and demand.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ARTFUL JOHN
Many of John Green’s Lowry fakes were sold in top Marbella clubs and bars
ARTFUL JOHN
John Green squinted closely at the canvas in the Spanish sunlight and then added a dab or two of paint before turning towards me and saying, ‘Lowrys are a piece of cake to copy. There are thousands in circulation and most of them sail past the so-called experts.’
Costa Del Crime Page 6
