"He knocked at the door. It was the fifth floor of an apartment block. He was tall, in his early seventies, better dressed than the occasion would have called for. Beside him in the hallway was an attractive blond woman in her early thirties. Also rather better dressed than one might have expected. Suddenly a bit of light shone from the peephole. He put his face in front of it. The door opened. He stood back slightly to let the blond woman enter before him. The stocky middle-aged woman at the door huffed: "What's this". Women did not enter this apartment unless they worked there. "I am a prostitute, and this is one of my clients. May I please speak to your boss." The woman held the door so they could not advance further. Looked over hr shoulder at someone inside. There was the noise of a chair moving and maybe a desk being moved out of the way. A muscular looking fat man pulled the door open. He had long black hair, could have been a Gipsy or just a Spaniard from Andalucia. They were in Santiago de Compostela, in the northwest other-end of the country. He said, "So?" Alana answered in her heavy English accent, "I have regular clients in Santiago, but I was put out of my apartment t. If I can bring them here, you can charge them and give me my part. I have at least five clients every day." Her voice trailed off, inviting him to answer. The man looked at R, the client, calculating an amount. "Fifty Euros and you get twenty." This was over the going rate, and her cut too low, but she said, "Yes", without hesitation. The fat man sat at a metal desk while R and Alana entered the brightly lit entrance. The woman closed the door behind them. As it swung closed it revealed three young girls lounging on a small couch. They appeared to be no older than seventeen, maybe as young as fourteen. The man had his arms on the desk, palms up. "Give me the money", he said to Alana. And you, he addressed R, "Show me everything in your pockets, we canīt allow anything dangerous." Alana, who had moved between the woman and the young prostitutes, began to fumble in her small purse. R took out a cellphone and bent toward the seated man as if to offer it to him. The giant cathedral bell could be heard nearby, ringing the mid-day hour. Instead of giving the man his somewhat odd-looking cellphone, R grabbed the man by his hair and jammed the phone into his neck. The man reached for something in the open desk drawer, but the cellphone made the large crackling sound of a stun device and the manīs eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped onto the desk. Alana meanwhile had been performing the same procedure on the woman, who fell onto the couch. The girls scattered in panic. Alana assured them they had nothing to fear, "We have come to rescue you and get you to a better life." As she felt in her bag for the syringe she asked how many other girls were in the rooms. Two of the girls were too frightened to answer, but the third, who had the look and complexion of a South Asian child, said there are three girls back there and three men with them. Alana then gave the two adults an injection to keep them asleep while the three volunteers and six rescuees made goood ther escape. Alana had entered each room and in an authoritative voice announced that: "Police will be arriving at any minute. Men, please leave at once; girls: come with me".
The girls were taken to a faclity of the Little Sisters of Charity .
Lastly, we set about to raise frunds to cover ther cost of keeping the girls, and returning those who wanted to go back to their famlies.
Thus ended our expirament in direct intervention. We have no plans to repeat this for the time being.
There were repercussion - in spite of having taken precautions, hiding identies, etc. We now know that to free the girls by ourselves we place our volunteers and therir families in grave danger, plus we aelienate the ultimate weapon required to stamp out this form of slavery: the police."