By Wendy Anders

Monday, the public prosecutor for La Fortuna de San Carlos, Natalia Álvarez, described the miserable living conditions of 13 foreign women who were held in dingy, dirty rooms at the back of bars for forced prostitution, reported La Nación, Costa Rica’s main daily newspaper today.

In order to leave the sites, the women were forced to pay CRC10,000 and had a set return time, said Álvarez. If they went off-site with a man, they had to pay CRC25,000.

The women, who said they had felt imprisoned, were freed in the early morning hours this past Saturday in a planned operation by the Professional Migration Police and the prosecutor’s office.

The rooms used for housing the women were small, foul smelling, outfitted with hand-made beds with ripped mattresses, and had no bathrooms, reported La Nación.

Álvarez was shocked by the conditions she witnessed at Los Horcones Bar, in Chachagua de San Ramón, close to La Fortuna, in which women had to bathe in an open shared stall with backed up greenish water in which there were toads.

The trash cans, continued Álvarez, were filled with used condoms, used needles, and medicine for treating sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea, indicating the health risks the women were regularly exposed to.

In addition to freeing women from Los Horcones Bar, two bars in La Fortuna de San Carlos – Los Acostados and El Tenampa – were also found to house sexual slaves.

A brother and sister by the last names Rivera Carrión were detained in connection with the sex operation. Also implicated were the woman’s daughter by the same last names, and two other women by the names of Hernández Valle and Hernández González, said La Nación.

The suspects were given six months jail time by the San Carlos criminal court while the case is investigated.

This alleged sex trafficking group would recruit women in Nicaragua and offer them a salary of $320 (¢180.000) per month as waitresses, reported La Nación.

The women were then smuggled into Costa Rica where they were then forced into prostitution.

The women charged CRC16,000 for the sexual encounters, and had to turn over all the money to the ring leaders, said the prosecutors office to La Nación.

The situation was detected on August 15 when one client helped three of the women escape. The women reported the abuses they had suffered to the police who then began investigating the case.

Three out of the 16 total victims (the three who were rescued in August, and the 13 rescued this past weekend) said they had been working voluntarily and had been properly paid for their services, so did not request court protections. The other 13 will enter into the court’s victim protection program, and receive psychological treatment and other protection, reported La Nación.