continuation.
"Donna M. Hughes, a professor of women's studies at the University of Rhode Island and an expert on the sex trade, says prostitution was almost non-existent in the Soviet Union 12 years ago. “It is suppressed by political structures. All the women had jobs." But in the first years after the collapse of Soviet communism, poverty rates in the former Soviet republics rose sharply. Young women—many of them college graduates and married—easily bought into the Hollywood images of swaying palm trees in Los Angeles. "Some claim that it might be prostitution," says Hughes. "But their idea of prostitution is Beautiful Woman, one of the most popular films in Ukraine and Russia. They think, 'Maybe it's not so bad.'" The girls' first contacts usually occur with seemingly legitimate travel agencies. According to the prosecutor's office, in Ukraine the Komiserok/Mazharetsky network cooperated with two such agencies in Kyiv: Art Life International and Sweet Tours. Friendly agents from Sweet and Art Life explained to the girls that the best way to get to the US was through Mexico, which they presented as a short walk or boat ride to where they could fulfill the American dream. Not suspecting anything, but full of hope, the girls get on planes to Europe and then to Mexico.'