When actress Frida Farrell was 22-years-old, she was held against her will and sold as a sex slave. Fourteen years after her ordeal, she's written and starred in a film, Selling Isobel, about her experience. Here she tells us what happened, and how it could easily happen to anyone…

"Fourteen years ago, I was living in London having grown up in Sweden. I'd just finished drama school and was looking for work, going to auditions anywhere from people's homes to theatres. I never thought of myself as naïve – I'm well educated and had lived in various cities around the world since leaving school at 16 - but after a terrifying experience, I'll think twice about everything I do from now on.

I was walking along Oxford Street in central London one day when I was flagged down by a man in the street. He introduced himself as Peter; he looked like he was in his early 50s, was wearing a suit and seemed respectable. So when he started speaking and came across as a nice enough man, I stopped to talk.

He told me he was doing a casting for a holiday brochure campaign, and while I told him I wasn't doing much modeling anymore, he pushed on, telling me it would only be half a day's work and would be really well paid. He handed me his card, told me to check out his website and to give him a call if I was interested in taking some test shots the following day.

I took the card and searched the website; it looked trustworthy enough, fairly standard for a photographer and had no pictures of women in underwear or anything that might make me suspicious, so I called him back and agreed to go along the next day.

When I got to Peter's house I travelled up the small lift to the top floor, the fifth, of an apartment block on Harley Street in London. The flat was set up just like a normal photo shoot; there was the background, the lights and cameras, there was a buffet of food and drinks and an assistant, a young woman, keeping everything organised.

Frida Farrell

I went in and took a few pictures. I was only there for a few minutes, and although it was just myself, Peter, and his assistant, it felt like they'd had people coming in and out all day. After the photos he told me he'd call tomorrow if the client liked me, so I left. It was just like any other casting.

I returned to the building the next day – Peter had rung saying the client loved me, and when I found out I'd earn £7,000 for half a day's work, I jumped at the chance. It wasn't such an abnormally high rate to ring alarm bells, but it was a lot for me.

I went back the next day at noon, having spoken to my boyfriend on the phone on the way. I'd been dating him, a trainee doctor, for a few months and he was about to start a shift which meant I probably wouldn't see him for the next three or four days. That's just how it worked for us; he'd work crazy hours for three days, sleep for 12 hours solid, and then we'd spend the next few days together.

I knocked on the door and Peter answered, cheerily saying hi. But as soon as I'd walked in, he slammed the door behind me and locked it. I turned around, almost in slow motion, and watched him turn the key and put it in his pocket.

Put your bag and phone on the floor

Peter's demeanour instantly changed, and my mind was racing, thinking 'this isn't right, why did he just lock the door?' I asked him what he was doing but he ignored me. He silently walked past me and as he turned, he pulled out a knife. He didn't threaten me with it, but just held it by his side as if to tell me not to disobey him.

I froze on the spot, feeling my whole body drain. The feeling was so intense I thought I was going to throw up. I said I needed the toilet and he pointed it out behind me, but told me to leave my bag and my phone on the floor in front of him. I did what I was told, terrified about what would happen if I didn't.

I went to the bathroom, closed the door, and frantically tried to find a way to get out. I had to get out. There was a tiny window, and I thought I might be able to squeeze through it if I really tried, but when I put my eye up to it, all I could see was a five-storey drop down to a concrete courtyard. I knew I wouldn't stand a chance if I jumped.

I didn't have much time and my brain was working a hundred miles an hour; I didn't know what he was doing out there. After a couple of minutes he knocked on the door and told me to open it. He handed me a bag and said "put these on", and my only response was to tell him I had a stomach ache. I was feeling so ill.

"'I'll give you some milk, that will help your stomach," he told me, and went to get me some. I looked down at the bag and it was filled with used underwear. I felt sick.

Development Hell Productions

He came back with a plastic cup of milk and I briefly wondered whether he'd spiked it with anything, but then I thought about the knife and I drank it anyway. At that point I felt like the calmer I remained, the less likely it was that he would stab me. You don't think much in that situation; you just think survival.

Peter told me again to put the underwear on, and I tried to reason with him, asking why he was doing this; but he just kept telling me to put it on. I picked some white underwear from the bag, it was the cleanest I could see, and went to put it on. When I came back to the living room where the photo shoot had been the day before, everything was gone. There were no lights, no cameras, no teas or coffees, no apples, no assistant. Nothing.

He told me he was going to take more pictures of me, and at that point I knew the milk was definitely laced with something. I felt hazy as he ordered me around, asking me to smile. I just thought 'how am I supposed to smile?' It felt crazy.

After the pictures, Peter sat down in an armchair and put the knife next to him on the arm. He ordered me to get on my knees to perform a sex act on him, and while I was doing it I wondered how fast I could grab the knife. I thought about biting down hard on him, but I knew if I did that he'd stab me. The knife was inches from me but his hand was right next to it.

At some point after that I fell asleep, I must have collapsed, because I woke up in a different place. I was on a bed but the underwear was beside me, not on me, and I don't remember how that happened. I almost think it's better I don't.

The whole place was stripped and there were bars on the windows

I didn't know it at the time, but I found out later that the second apartment was in the same building, all the way down in the basement. The new place was silent and seemed empty, so I went through the whole flat looking everywhere for an escape, but there were bars on all the windows. The kitchen was bizarre; he'd taken everything out of it. There were holes everywhere where the drawers and the doors should have been, there was no light bulb in the fridge, the toilet seat was gone – and I later realised he'd removed anything I could have used as a weapon.

It was all so thought through, which made me think in hindsight that I couldn't have been the only one. You don't do all this for one lucky chance; it's much more calculated and a process he's probably done over and over for as long as he can get away with it.

I tried to rip off the wooden door frames but everything was all so well built I couldn't get them off without a tool. Nothing was loose. After a while, Peter came in and gave me something else to eat and drink, which was when I passed out again. When I next woke up, there was a man in the room with me, and you can probably imagine what happened from there.

In between the men coming and going, Peter would tell me "the next one" was on his way. I don't know how many there were in total, maybe four or five, but again, maybe it's better I don't know.

On the third day - I think it was that long because I remember it getting dark and light - Peter came down, but he seemed slightly frantic, short of breath. He told me someone was coming in a few minutes and that I needed to get ready.

Development Hell Productions

I started moving, but noticed when he left the room, he didn't lock the door. It felt like I was in a movie; I zoned into the sound of him leaving and thought, 'he hasn't locked it, he hasn't locked it'. I was instantly sober.

I tiptoed to the door and put my ear against it, and I could hear his footsteps going upstairs. At this point I didn't know exactly where I was, but then I heard the elevator grill slam shut and remembered the sound from when I'd gone up to Peter's flat a few days before.

I remember thinking I probably had one minute before he'd be back down, but my mind was going crazy; I even thought for a second maybe he'd faked going into the lift just to test me, to see if I'd try to escape. But I tried the handle to the apartment door anyway, and when it opened I knew I couldn't stop. I grabbed my jacket because it was the only thing I could see and put it on over my robe as I snuck silently up the stairs.

As I got to the top I instantly recognised the entrance. I knew I was in the same building. But that meant there was a doorman just around the corner and I was terrified he might have been in on it. What if he grabbed me as I went past?

So I just ran as fast as I could. I ran through the revolving door, turned right and just ran for streets and streets. I don't even know if I was wearing shoes.

As I ran I kept turning back to see if he was behind me, but eventually I felt sure there was no-one, and I stopped. It was dark outside, and the only thing I could think was to get in a taxi to my friend's house. When I arrived, she could see something had happened but was very respectful and didn't push me too much for answers.

I felt so embarrassed afterwards that at first, I didn't want to tell anyone. It took me four days to contact the police. As the days passed, I just felt like I couldn't explain what I'd been through to my boyfriend, so I avoided him until he realised I didn't want to see him again. He still doesn't know why I ended it so abruptly, all these years later.

I don't know if Peter has ever been caught

Although 14 years doesn't sound like much, back then police didn't seem to take crimes like this as seriously as they would now. The officers asked me how I got to the flat in the first place, if anyone had forced me in, and when I told them I'd walked in on my own it was almost as if they couldn't take me seriously.

They didn't say as much, but it felt like they thought it was my own fault for going there in the first place. I was so humiliated that I left the police station.

I don't know if Peter has ever been caught. The police said the apartment was rented by the week, that his fingerprints didn't match any in the system, and that his phone number was attached to a pay as you go sim card that had been shut down. His website was traced back to Eastern Europe but they couldn't locate him, so that was pretty much it. There were no more avenues to explore.

In the month afterwards, my mind completely blacked out. I pushed the experience aside, barely telling anyone, and it was only when it came to writing the script for the film, Selling Isobel, in recent years that I revisited it all.

Sex slavery is the fastest growing criminal business in the world. To put things in perspective, Burger King's annual net sales in 2015 were $1.1bn; whereas the estimated annual revenue for sex slavery is $32bn. It's staggering, it doesn't just happen in the depths of Eastern Europe, and if it happened so easily to me, it could happen to anyone."

Frida's story has been turned into a feature-length film, Selling Isobel, which stars Frida herself and was nominated for best film at the 20th Raindance Film Festival earlier this year. Watch the film's trailer below:

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Catriona Harvey-Jenner Digital Features Editor Cat is Cosmopolitan UK's features editor covering women's issues, health and current affairs.

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