Sentenced for forcing teen into prostitution

A woman was sentenced to five years in jail for trafficking in children. Elena Badarau was found guilty of recruiting a 16-year-old girl for prostitution. According to the Prosecutor-General’s Office, the Supreme Court of Justice sentenced the woman to 5 years in prison in the penitentiary for women, being accused by the prosecutors that in August 2002 in Leova town she recruited a teenager in order to traffic her to Turkey, where she had to be a prostitute. According to the same source, another woman was sentenced for the same activities. She will spend 6 years and 8 months in jail because she tried to determine two minor girls to become prostitutes. The Buiucani District Court said that Oxana Bulat proposed the girls to leave for Turkey, claiming that they would be entertainers in a night club. When the girls arrived in Turkey, they were forced to give away their passports and become prostitutes. After being found by the law enforcement bodies of Turkey the victims were sent back to Moldova. Both court decisions are irreversible. At present, neither the Moldovan Government nor the NGOs have exact statistic data about the number of trafficked victims. According to the data of the International Organisation for Migration, 1400 trafficked persons were repatriated to Moldova over the last four years, 11% of them teenagers. In 2006, 236 girls were repatriated to Moldova after they were trafficked to Russia, Turkey and United Arab Emirates.