The Price of Sex

These heartbreaking stories are found on the website The Price of Sex: Women Speak. Hundreds of thousands of Eastern European women have been sold into prostitution since the collapse of communism in 1989. Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova, a Bulgarian who immigrated to the United States in 1990, has documented their journeys from villages in Moldova and Albania to the streets of Turkey and nightclubs in Dubai. In this 2008 Emmy-nominated Frontline/World documentary, Chakarova goes undercover to report a story about prostitution in Dubai, a city of 1.5 million known as the Las Vegas of the Persian Gulf. There are thousands of Filipino women in Dubai, and I wonder what tragedy have joined them there as well. Over and over again, I cannot help but think how utterly dark this world is.


Reported and photographed from 2003-2007, another Frontline/World flashPoint feature called "Moldova: The Price of Sex" takes you to Moldova, where Chakarova captures the lives of young women trafficked into the sex trade in Russia, Turkey, the Balkans, the United Arab Emirates and Israel.