Sex trade duo sent to prison (From Stourbridge News)

Sex trade duo sent to prison

8:41am Tuesday 16th January 2007 in Local

A COUPLE who admitted recruiting a sex worker for a Wall Heath man have been jailed.

Attila Makai, aged 22, and girlfriend Klinga Borcsok, aged 28, received a total of five years and eight months for running an organised racket to bring women from eastern Europe to work as prostitutes.

Last year, Carl Pritchett of Holbeache Road, received a two-year jail term for running Cuddles massage parlour which employed one of the women bought to the UK by Makai and Borcsok.

Following a raid on the brothel, in Hagley Road, Bearwood, 50 police officers discovered 19 scantily clad women and 504 condoms, from an order of 28,000.

At Wolverhampton Crown Court on Thursday January 11, Judge Nicholas Webb told the Hungarian couple he had not been asked to consider deportation but added: "I cannot think your continued presence in this country after you have served your sentences is in the public interests."

The court heard Pritchett and two accomplices, who last year received community orders, played no part at all in recruiting women from abroad to work in the brothel.

Simon Drew, prosecuting, said the woman who ended up at Cuddles had a harrowing time after flying in to Stansted airport.

She was handed over to Albanians for the sum of £3,000 and taken to Glasgow where she was raped twice before being told she must work in a brothel.

Mr Drew said: "The woman was sold like a commodity - it was not like the sale of a footballer, it was something far more sinister - she was sold in a sordid, twilight trade to work as a prostitute."

She moved with the second woman to the Birmingham area where they both worked in the sex industry before being rescued after making cries for help to friends back in Hungary.

The Hungarian authorities were notified and contacted police in the United Kingdom who organised the raid on Cuddles.

Jas Mann, defending Borcsok, who cried as she was being sentenced, maintained it was not a case where the two women had been corrupted.

He said Borcsok, of Huccleoak Road, Gloucester, who was sent to prison for 28 months, had simply provided information to the women.

Rupert Bowers for Makai, of Gresham Road, Neasden, London, who was jailed for 40 months said: "These women were well educated and they came into the country with their eyes open. They came willing to work as prostitutes."