Bought & Sold

Based on a two-year undercover investigation, Bought & Sold documents the illegal trafficking in women for forced prostitution out of Russia and the Former Soviet Union, and into Europe, Asia and the United States. These women are kept in servitude, forced to work in degrading and life-threatening situations, denied their earnings, and subject to mental and physical abuse. Global Survival Network went undercover in meetings with the Russian mafia and in brothels around the world to get an insider's perspective on how the international trade in women works. Operating through nominally reputable employment agencies, entertainment companies, or marriage agencies, criminal traffickers mislead and manipulate women. In the most extreme cases, the perpetrators buy and sell women and girls as if they were objects. GSN defines trafficking as all acts involved in the recruitment or transportation of a woman within or across national borders, for work or services, by means of violence or threat of violence, debt bondage, deception, or other coercion. This groundbreaking documentary helped to catalyze legislative reform on trafficking worldwide, as well as new financial resources to address the problem.