MOSCOW, February 3 (RIA Novosti) – A woman from the southern Russian city of Volgograd has been sentenced to five years in jail for her role in selling another woman into sexual slavery abroad, prosecutors said Monday.
Tatyana Shelkovnikova, an employee at a travel agency, promised the 21-year-old victim a job as a waitress in Spain with a good salary. As soon as the victim arrived there in August 2006, Shelkovnikova’s suspected female accomplice confiscated her passport and forced her into sex slavery.
After being made to work as a prostitute for three months, the victim managed to escape and returned to her home to the Volgograd Region, where she told her story to the police. Shelkovnikova at first denied her role, but later confessed to the crime.
An investigation against her suspected accomplice, who lives in Spain, is ongoing.
An annual US State Department report in June cited Russia among the world's worst offenders in fighting forced labor and sex trafficking. Russia "had not established any concrete system for the identification or care of trafficking victims, lacking any formal victim identification and referral mechanism," the report said.
