Emma Thompson's ‘Journey’ into sex slavery

By Marcia Stepanek

updated 3:47 p.m. ET Nov. 13, 2009

NEW YORK - A filthy bedroom, pungent with the smell of sex and cheap perfume, is recreated for the curious. There is peeling wallpaper, soiled condom wrappers littering the floor and a dirty sink filled with half-used lipstick tubes and cigarette butts. Along one wall, a stained bed heaves under the weight of invisible, moving bodies engaged in rough sex.

The scene is part of British actress Emma Thompson’s controversial and powerful new public art exhibit to raise awareness of international sex trafficking. The exhibit is housed inside a chain of seven railroad boxcars, arranged as if waiting to depart at any moment, their exteriors slathered with degrading graffiti meant to stigmatize the captives portrayed inside.

Called "Journey," the exhibit, which opened in New York this week and runs through Sunday, attempts to unmask the denial that keeps the bustling sex-slave industry hidden in plain sight. [Long Island is a region where trafficking is rampant, curators say.]

Thompson says that she, herself, woke up to the issue after being introduced to a woman who had been a sex slave at a massage parlor that Thompson passed each day on her way to the London subway. "I was devastated that it was happening so close to where I lived and that I was doing nothing about it," she said.

Thompson is chair of the Helen Bamber Foundation, a London-based philanthropic foundation formed in 2005 to help victims of cruelty. It was through Bamber – an 84-year-old woman who was on one of the first rehabilitation teams to visit the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 — that Thompson first heard the story of Elena, a young Moldovan woman trafficked into Britain at the age of 19. Elena’s story inspired Journey.

I caught up with Thompson and Bamber Foundation co-founder Michael Korzinski at the exhibit. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation. "Journey" leaves Sunday for Madrid. New York City is the exhibit’s only U.S. stop.

What was it about Elena’s story that first inspired you to take action?

Thompson: I think it was simply how easily traffickers are able to prey on victims of tragedy. Elena’s father had died and she’d gone to work in the market selling vegetables and she was very unhappy about her life. She had to leave school.

Stan Honda / AFP - Getty Images A "sex slave" is seen through a peephole inside the exhibit.

A woman in the market came up to her and invited her home, then offered to get her a nice job as a doctor’s receptionist in London. She told Elena that she’d be able to save money, send it back home, and go back to school, so Elena handed over her passport and ended up in London six weeks later, only to be told that she owed them 50,000 British pounds ($82,900) to pay for her journey to the U.K. and that she would have to earn that money by working as a prostitute.

When Elena said no, that’s when the beating started. She was put into solitary confinement for two weeks. Then they told her they would hurt her family. I think it’s very important for people to understand that girls who are forced into this kind of slavery have been tortured, beaten, raped and threatened. It’s not the personal threats that really carry the weight; it’s the threats of harm to these girls’ family members that eventually breaks them down.

Elena is quoted as saying that prior to her confinement, she’d never seen a man naked; while in confinement, she says, “there were never less than 40 men a day.” Then she got arrested in a raid and was thrown into jail, where British authorities treated her badly. Eventually, she told trafficking investigators her story but it was clear that by then, she was deeply, emotionally scarred.

Thompson: When sex slaves are thrown into jail they usually can’t speak English; the vast majority of the men and women trafficked come from Eastern Europe and they have no papers because they are illegals. In the detention centers, they are not helped in any way and then they are deported.

But wouldn’t deportation be a form of escape for many of these people?

Thompson: When Elena came to the Bamber Foundation, she wasn't in very good shape. She'd gone home but she wasn't herself anymore, and couldn't face her mother or her family. She was someone deeply ashamed, someone utterly stigmatized by what she was doing and what had happened to her. She was someone who, in her own mind, was not literally worth helping.

Why did you choose this method to tell the story of human trafficking?

Thompson: Because there have recently been some very good documentaries and films about the problem. There’s a brilliant film called Lilja Forever and a great TV series called "Sex Traffic" that is pertinent. Unfortunately, though, I think sometimes when you present things too graphically, people get frightened and they can’t cope with the suffering. I wanted to find a way that I could engage people without scaring them off. I wanted to use shipping containers because trafficking is all about moving people about. I designed one of the containers and we had some very high-profile artists each taking one of the other cars to fill out the experience.

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