THE POLICE have detained 40-year-old Jana S. and 42-year-old Michal K. who forced five women in Žilina into prostitution. They were charged with pimping and now face up to five years in prison, the SITA newswire reported on February 10.
The police caught the couple based on information provided by the relatives of a woman whom the couple had blackmailed by abducting her two year-old son, whom they kept at an unknown location. The police found both the woman and her son, Ivan Špánik, the Žilina regional police head told the press, as cited by SITA. They later found another three women, he added.
The couple rented several flats around Žilina and forced at least five women into prostitution between June 2013 and February 2014. According to Špánik this is not the only case.
“We are often confronted with such suspicions, but these crimes are only hardly proven; it is very difficult to document them,” he said, as quoted by SITA, adding that proving the women were forced into prostitution or subjected to violence can be problematic.
Getting abused women to cooperate, not only in Žilina, but also around Slovakia and in other countries, is also a problem, Špánik said.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
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