I WAS RAPED NIGHT & DAY IN SLAVE HELL

EXCLUSIVE: Migrant's terrifying story

By Jane Atkinson

PRETTY Erica arrived in Britain treasuring a brand new EU passport and dreams of escaping poverty in her homeland.

But within minutes of landing at Gatwick, the 20-year-old brunette was sold to a vice gang, locked up as a sex slave and made to suffer six months of foul degradation.

In one of the most shocking stories you will ever read, brave Erica shook as she told how she was:

BOUGHT for £4,000 by gangs of evil Albanian pimps.

RAPED repeatedly, beaten, humiliated and threatened with death.

HELD captive in an outwardly respectable suburban semi.

FORCED to sleep with 40 men a day.

ORDERED to have unprotected sex and join in acts too vile to mention.

WARNED her little daughter back home would be killed if she refused.

Last night Erica, speaking after the escape of an 18-year-old girl held captive for eight years in an Austrian cellar, shuddered: "I thought I was going to England for a happy time, to make money and see the world.

"But I was locked in a room and turned into a prostitute. I cried and screamed but nothing stopped them.

"I had to have sex all day, every day. They were British, Turkish, Albanian, German. I have no idea how many men forced me to do it.

"I just wanted to die, I didn't want to be hurt any more."

Erica Pakalnyte, now 22 and safely back home, is just one of the hundreds of immigrants from new EU countries arriving here who are taken advantage of by evil gangs.

Tip of the iceberg

As many as 2,000 girls from her homeland Lithuania have become sex slaves in the past two years.

Det Sgt Tony Eddington, who investigated her ordeal, said: "She is just the tip of the iceberg of sex trafficking here. She was totally dehumanised and will probably never fully recover."

Erica came to Britain in 2004 after a woman called Jurga promised to get her a job in London as a barmaid.

She left her daughter Emilija, four, with her ex-husband and flew over for a working holiday.

Sex for freedom

At the airport she was met by two men she thought were Jurga's friends. But the woman had actually SOLD her as a slave for £4,000.

An Albanian called Arnis told her she must sell her body to earn her freedom and took her to a flat where eight other Lithuanian girls were locked in rooms.

Then the fat, balding pimp raped her many times. Before that night, she'd slept with only two men.

Speaking through an interpreter, she said: "I was so unbelievably scared but there was nowhere to go, nothing I could do. He said if I went to the authorities he'd beat me to death."

At first Erica refused to bed clients despite being beaten every night. But she said: "After two weeks of that Arnis told me my daughter would be killed if I didn't sleep with the men. "Then I knew I had to. I was locked in a room and the door only opened when men came in. "They would have sex with me, then I would be put in the shower, then I would be put back in the room for men to have sex again.

"I tried not to think of what they were doing to me. I would think of cuddling my daughter—anything apart from what was happening.

"Sometimes there would be more than one man doing things to me."

Surrey brothel

Erica was sold on twice to other Albanian gangs. Once she did manage to run away but was spotted by one of the thugs and bundled into a car.

She ended up in a brothel run by asylum seekers Mirella Zeneli and boyfriend Blendi Krasniqi, both 34, at a semi in Sutton, Surrey.

She was locked up, drugged, fed on only one hamburger a day, watched constantly, and told that if she went to the police she would end up in prison. Her pimps charged £120 a time — without a condom was £20 extra.

She said: "I had sex all day and all night. Sometimes it was with more than one man. Sometimes they would laugh as they did it to me.

"Men would hold me down or hit me. They were allowed to do whatever they wanted to me. I don't know if thay all knew they were raping me.

"One day when my bosses put me in the shower I saw a razor and cut my wrists. But they broke down the door, put cigarette ash on the wounds and then sent me back to work."

Erica was forced to perform vile sexual perversions too sickening to detail. Then she fell pregnant and was taken for a horrific backstreet abortion.

Escape

She recalled: "It was an English customer, a doctor. I screamed in pain but he didn't care how much he hurt me."

Erica finally managed to escape six months after arriving in Britain. Her captors dropped their guard when she was with a client and she ran away.

Evil Zeneli was arrested and jailed for 14 years in May. Her lover Krasniqi got six. Before the trial Erica was threatened and her daughter briefly abducted to try to stop her giving evidence.

But Erica said: "I wanted them to pay and I knew I had to be strong."

She is now back in her home town with boyfriend Vladas, 27 and the Catholic charity Caritas has helped her try to get her life back together.

Vladas said: "The Erica that came back from England was not the same girl I said goodbye to that day. Part of her died and stayed over there."