Cops bust virgin sex ring in Vietnam
HANOI - Police in southern Vietnam have arrested three women and one man charged with running a prostitution ring that specialised in offering virgins and sending sex workers to Taiwan, a police official said on Monday.
The bust stemmed from a raid on a hotel in Ho Chi Minh on March 12, which found four prostitutes with four clients, said the police officer.
The four sex workers led police to arrest Tran Huu Mai, Nguyen Thi Hong, Nguyen Thi Nam and Tran Ngoc Duc on charges of organising prostitution, the police officer said.
Nam toured the rural provinces surrounding Ho Chi Minh, and promised to find Taiwanese husbands for the young women she recruited.
Mai and Hong kept the women in two apartments in the southern city and organised clients. Duc worked at a hotel and arranged the liaisons between the women and customers.
When the girls that Nam recruited were brought to the southern business capital, they were forced to work as prostitutes to pay for their passage to Taiwan, the investigating police officer said.
The madams charged clients about $32 (about R256) per night. If the girls were virgins, the madams prostituted the young women for about $500 (about R4 000) per night, the police officer said.
The sex workers had to pay the madams 50 percent of their earnings.
Their customers included foreigners and wealthy Vietnamese, and dozens of women had already been trafficked to Taiwan by the gang, the police officer said.
When the sex workers saved up enough for the airfare they were taken to Taiwan on tourist visas and forced to work as prostitutes there.
When their visa expired after six months, the brothel owners told police to arrest and expel them from the island in order to avoid paying the women, the police officer reported.
One of the prostitutes arrested on March 12 was deported from Taiwan and had arrived in Ho Chi Minh on March 8 without a cent to her name.
She was forced to come back to the ring and ask for work, said the police officer.
Under Vietnamese law, if convicted, the defendants will face between five and 20 years in prison
Sapa-DPA (.za) - March 17, 2003.
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