Mistress

Hidden Women looks at the human faces and desperate victims of the sex trade industry and the heartless villains who traffic in their misery Sexual slavery is happening in quiet Australian suburbs today, right now, and effects everyone. Hidden Women reveals the extent of these grotesque crimes and the role Australians play in funding it. It has become apparent that it is not always strangers who sell women into slavery; families do it too. Horrified young Australian girls are increasingly calling the Australian Federal Police and begging to be put on the Airport Watch List to prevent them being taken to marry a much older cousin in their parents' homeland of Iraq, Egypt, India or Lebanon. If the girls do not agree they are often dragged by their hair around the family home and beaten until they do. Researchers have found young women, sent from Iraq to marry their Australian cousins, who are never allowed to leave the house. Hidden Women shines the spotlight of truth on the outdated traditions being practiced in Australia in the first half of the new millennium. And while human life may seem cheap, to desperate childless couples it is the most valuable commodity in the world. One so sought after that they are prepared to go to baby farms to start their family. But the unfortunate mothers, carriers of the children, are often poor, ill-informed, and forced into nine months of physical slavery against their will. By looking at the trade in human misery through the eyes of the victims, Hidden Women tells the stories of the investigators trying to stop it, the care workers trying to deal with it, and the bungling of the politicians too worried about votes to tackle it. At its heart, this book exposes the money hungry immorality that allows people to traffic in human misery while the rest of Australian society turns a blind eye and denies the truth--Australia today has a booming dirty blood trade.