A woman who was used as a sex-slave managed to escape her captor and save three other women held by him after she used knotted sheets to climb to safety.
Police have hailed the courage of the 29-year-old after she escaped from the flat where she was being held in Irkutsk, a city in the far east of Russia.
She was allegedly being held at the second-storey flat, along with three other women, by Emmanuel Maslow, 34, who has been arrested on charges of drug dealing and sex trafficking
Police said he wanted to create a ‘harem’ of women. It is claimed he managed to trap her and the other women by meeting them in the city and enticing them back to his flat.
The women were allegedly kept in chains at the flat and threatened with death if they made a noise.
A security door is said to have prevented the women from escaping and they were allegedly plied with alcohol.
The woman who escaped gathered the courage to do so after drinking alcohol, the Central European News agency reported.
She knotted sheets together and climbed to safety while her captor was in the kitchen.
A police spokesman said: ‘We returned to the apartment with her and freed the other terrified women.
‘All are getting medical treatment and the man is in custody.’
He did not say how long the women had been held but confirmed the man seemed to have planned for them to be there for a long time.
He said large quantities of drugs had also been discovered at the flat and that the man faced charges of drug dealing and sex trafficking.
Police suspect other people knew that the four women were there and that there were indications he had offered them to clients of his alleged drugs business for sex.
