From the Publisher

By Elizabeth Valk Long

We at TIME have always taken pride in our tradition of group journalism. By pooling the talents of correspondents based on six continents, we are able to bring to our stories a scope and perspective that few other newsgathering organizations can match. One particularly satisfying example of the technique is this week's special report about a global sex trade so broad in its reach that few corners of the earth remain untouched by its depredations.

Relying on reports from 26 locations round the globe, our story tracks this new slave trade from Nepal's Himalayan villages to the mining towns of the Amazon and on to West European strip clubs. "This story demonstrates our global reach and knowledge," says senior editor Christopher Redman, who coordinated the report from his office in Brussels. "We got up close to a difficult subject most people don't want to talk about."

Readers often ask where we get our ideas. In this instance, it began with a report of a Belgium-based slave-trade ring and with news out of Eastern Europe that young women were bartering themselves as brides in exchange for a life in the more affluent West. While some of these marriages produced happy endings, contributor Frederick Painton was struck by the fact that the majority of women who leaped into these unions did so out of economic desperation. Reporters fanned out to probe the phenomenon. At the same time, assistant picture editor Jay Colton came across moving photos of child prostitutes in Russia taken by Alexei Ostrovskiy.

It was then up to Paris correspondent Margot Hornblower to weave the reports into a single story. Associate editor Michael Serrill wrote an accompanying piece on the corruption of children. Both stories were informed by the personal insights of our reporters as they moved through this grimy underworld. "At a strip club, I tried to convince a Flemish anesthesiologist that I didn't work there," recalls the Brussels bureau's Susanna Schrobsdorff. "Thinking he was being snubbed by a prostitute, he screamed a barrage of insults, smashed his glass, then stomped out." It was that kind of story, sad to say, all around the world.