Slave Girls

by Wensley Clarkson

Secret prisoners behind closed doors, they were real-life Cinderellas-- with no hope of rescue. Nowhere to run...nowhere to hide...nowhere to turn...

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 22, 1996

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned how to order a human from another country for $280, while listing them as domestic help.

[Victoria (TheMennomilistReads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the most descriptively gruesome human trafficking book I have read outside of the child soldier ones (and I've read 80 books on the subject).

What I liked about this book was that it was raw and based on modern-day slavery set in the 1980s-1990s (the book was written in 1996). I don't really hear of many accounts from that time, though I know it existed, but it shows how much more often people got away with things and how much more the cost of slavery is (the prices are lower since the internet boomed which is scarier).

These are stories about girls forced into sexual slavery or slave labor (such as live-in maids), either kidnapped, drugged, coerced, you name it.

Chapter 3 was more of crime investigation story but it is about a man who kept slave girls in his basement, but it doesn't paint enough of a story of how sex slaves today work (but goodness this was the most gruesome chapter and hardest to read out of the entire book). The whole book graphically tells of how these women were abused.

Not all of these stories have happy endings, so be prepared. Definitely one that I enjoyed, as hard as it was to read.

[Chromatic Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life is cheap, well it is if you come from a poor background and in some Countries you might be sold into a life of drudgery, sex abuse and beatings...this is a collection of true stories about abuse, enslavement, and degradation, and these events took place in the 1990s not the 1790s...in America, Kuwait, England, in fact all over the World. This is a depressing but compelling book

[Ben Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s some really strong passages in this book - however, it becomes repetitive towards the later half. With that said, it is really interesting and discusses something which I haven’t read much about prior!

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

So when I got this book I thought it was going to be like one big story of one woman’s experience of being a slave girl or her experience of being a slave with other women who were slaves. Not like a bunch of different peoples different stories about having been slaves or enslaved. However after I started reading it I went back and read the jacket again and realize that it clearly states it’s multiple people stories so that was my mistake. Some of the things that are told in this book are just very horrific and horrible and you don’t even want to think that they really happened to someone. but like I said it wasn’t really what I expected it to be so I guess I didn’t enjoy it as much because I was expecting something else.

[Melissa Dally · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sad collection of tales from various places (including the US, of course) of women and girls treated with depraved indifference. It's too easy and too cheap to own somebody outright and it's WAY too ridiculously lightly punished. And it's a sad state of being that there are this many people callous enough to make a buck on the virginity of an innocent little girl. Never mind the lack of humanity evident in the man who could actually fuck her. My one complaint is that this is just a little disjointed and despite supposed to be being about sex slaves, there are a handful of stories of abused domestics and sweatshop workers (which is a sad thing unto itself). Bleh. Interestingly enough, the very last story is an actual BDSM Master/slave relationship where the slave has found happiness in slavery.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read this book nearly 30 times and each time I read it; I am honestly blown away by the extreme honesty this author puts within his writing. Wensley Clarkson not only puts forth the truth within this book; he also reveals a whole new side to the human sex trade; human trafficking, and how far people really will go to get what they want.

[G Ream · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why do we allow this to happen?

[Meg · Rating 1 out of 5]

Would have been a half decent true crime novel if the author's writing wasn't so terrible.