Olga* was a teacher by profession but her salary could not sustain her disabled son and her mother. Back in 1997, the 31-year-old came across an advert in a local newspaper to work as a salesgirl in a fashion shop in Malta, promising healthy earnings of $2,000 per month.

She took the plunge but, unwittingly, Olga became the victim of an organised international network of criminals profiting from the exploitation of human beings. Within weeks she found herself locked in a room, fighting off pressure to prostitute herself.

After responding to the advert, a woman invited her for a meeting to discuss the job and trip. They met and agreed that she would go for a full year to Malta and with her first pay cheque would repay the expenses for the ticket and visa.

"I travelled to Malta from Kiev. I was met by a Ukrainian woman and a Maltese man. They took me to an apartment and let me rest till they returned some time later. The woman told me that I had to dress nicely so she could show me around and explain what I had to do. Within minutes I came to understand I would be working as a prostitute and not in a shop.

"I refused immediately and she started to become aggressive... I still refused because I couldn't do something against my principles, even if I died of hunger. I was left in the apartment and barred from going out."

A neighbour helped Olga to establish contact with another Maltese person she met on the flight.

"I managed to track down a neighbour from a window at the back (of the flat). I relayed the telephone number of an individual in Malta who knew I was there," she recalls.

She managed to pass on the message with the help of a dictionary, since she could not speak English.

Her plan worked and very soon the individual rescued her from the apartment. She could not say whether any arrests were made at the time.

Olga returned to Ukraine. "Every time I hear the word 'prostitution' I feel shivers all over my body and consider myself lucky," she says.

Olga is now safe back in the Ukraine thanks to the help of a Maltese neighbour but she says the grim memories of her ordeal will forever haunt her.

The Ukrainian's case is only one of a few that have come to light in Malta, but an expert in human trafficking insists that the country needs to start tackling the problem.

Detective Inspector Paul Holmes said the lack of available information in Malta or the fact that only few victims have been identified does not mean the country is not involved in human trafficking.

"Why wouldn't it be happening in Malta? You have huge numbers of visitors to the island, a flourishing tourism sector... wherever you have that, anywhere else in the world you certainly get trafficking for sexual exploitation to meet the tourist market. If there is no trafficking in people in Malta it would be amazing," he told The Sunday Times.

Mr Holmes was Operational Head of the sex trafficking squad of New Scotland Yard for seven years. In 2000, he was appointed as the inaugural chairman of the Interpol Specialists Working Group on Trafficking in Women and Children. Since retiring from active duty, he has advised governments and international organisations on counter-trafficking measures.

Human trafficking claims hundreds of thousands of victims annually. Since the mid-1990s there has been an expansion and refinement of slave trade networks that are part of a global multibillion dollar industry.

He was invited to Malta by the International Organisation for Migration to conduct training as part of an EU project to develop the capacity for the police and the care agencies to identify victims in a more effective way, and then cooperate with the criminal justice system to bring these people to justice.

In other European countries, investigations into the issue led to the discovery of criminal networks that had previously gone undetected. According to Mr Holmes, the UK denied it had a problem for too long:

"Eventually, through public pressure, an intelligence assessment was ordered. It showed it wasn't a London problem but a national problem and the numbers were huge. When it comes to trafficking for sexual exploitation, you can't profit unless the clients can find their victim.

"So are we saying in Malta that clients can find these people but we can't? Because that's not an acceptable position," Mr Holmes insists.

* Name has been changed to protect the woman's identity.