At Agenica Roberta, a call-girl service in this tourist haven known for sun and sin, business is booming, thanks in large part to the Internet. Italians, Germans, Americans and other foreigners can make arrangements for services in advance, even before their planes touch down.
The oldest profession in the world is getting a boost from the newest technology. All the prostitutes know about this," says Betty, a freelance hooker in Rio who speaks over a rattling television and the laughter of children. She advertises her Web site in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo. The Internet gained early fame as a tool to arrange consensual sex via chat rooms. But it also has a more sinister function. It has become a tool that aids the exploitation of women who are tricked or forced into prostitution around the world.
In fact, advanced digital cameras mean these women find themselves performing sex acts for voyeurs across the globe. With a few clicks of a computer mouse, a man can log on anywhere from suburban Maryland to rural Montana and be transported instantly to a bedroom in Thailand or the Ukraine. Over time, it will increase the demand for real sex slaves," warned J. Law enforcement officials have known that women are often held against their will and forced into sex at Asian brothels or those controlled by the Russian mob, even in the United States.
But now there is a new twist: The act can be sold around the world, Flores said. In Brazil, prostitutes have become prime targets for global sex syndicates, who lure them to foreign countries and then enslave them, said Carla Dolinski, a police investigator who leads anti-trafficking efforts in Rio.
An estimated 75, Brazilian women work in Europe as prostitutes, many against their will. Dolinski said police recently received a complaint about a widely circulated e-mail trying to recruit Brazilian prostitutes for work in Spain. And there are well-documented cases of ordinary women being tricked into traveling abroad for work, only to be forced into prostitution. One of them is year-old Beatriz, an ebony-skinned woman with a cover-girl smile. She left her home on the rough outskirts of Rio for the tourist island of Lanzarote, near the Canary Islands.
