It was September 2001 and I was in Zagreb, Croatia, at the end of two weeks in the Balkans. I was there to train law enforcers in counter-trafficking initiatives: the importation of women from that region into Western European sex markets was rife following the war in the 1990s. Police in the UK had disrupted several trafficking rings originating in the Balkans, and stories were emerging as to the horror their victims had endured.
Well into our second bottle, I spotted a group of leather-jacketed men leading several women, each tottering on spike heels, through to the ballroom
To put this trip in context, I had been sitting and talking with men in windowless rooms in Kosovo, Moldova, Albania and Macedonia for up to ten hours a day while they smoked and drank white spirits (from 8 a.m.). I had been listening to the most misogynistic banter imaginable. These were the men charged with policing and prosecuting human traffickers.
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