Pimp sold 'London's youngest escort'

A pimp from eastern Europe "bought" a teenager for £3,000 and advertised her as London's youngest prostitute.

While the terrified girl lived on £10 a week in the West End, Niki Dimitrov pocketed £600.

Dimitrov, 29, punched and kicked the pony-tailed teenager if she refused to perform degrading sexual acts for clients and threatened to follow her "to the Sahara" and kill her if she escaped.

The girl, 17, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had answered an advertisement in her local paper in Russia last year for "well-paid work abroad".

Desperate to earn money for her impoverished family she, together with a friend, was offered a job waiting tables and handed passports to travel to Belgium.

But once they arrived in Brussels they were separated and she was set to work as a prostitute and later sold by her captors to Dimitrov.

The Yugoslavian, who claimed benefits, took her to London, put obscene photos of her on the internet and told two escort agencies she was "Probably the youngest escort girl in London". To convince brothel madams she was older and thus avoid charges of living off child prostitution, Dimitrov stuck her picture into a stolen passport to show she was over 18.

Her five-month ordeal ended in June when police raided another brothel in Sudbury, north west London, and Dimitrov was arrested at his home in Islington a month later.

She said: "He told me: 'Don't think about running away because I will find you and I will kill you - even if you are in the Sahara.'

"He was beating me up. Once, I wasn't able to work for one and a half weeks because of the visible injuries. He didn't take me to a doctor.

"I was not allowed to go anywhere - it was strictly forbidden. If I was to go to a shop he would have to accompany me. He even decided what clothes I bought."

Jailing Dimitrov for six years at Southwark Crown Court, Judge James Wadsworth QC ordered he should be placed on the sex offenders' register for life.

He said: "You paid money or incurred a debt to obtain this young girl ... organised her transfer to this country, and here, I am satisfied, you used her as a prostitute. You did so by totally controlling her movements and, I am satisfied, you used violence against her to exercise this control.

"This would have continued had it not been for the intervention by a man who took pity on her."

The judge refrained from recommending Dimitrov be deported after jail in consideration for his wife.

Dimitrov had pleaded guilty to living on prostitution and was convicted of controlling a child prostitute and possessing a false passport. He was acquitted on a legal technicality of arranging or facilitating the girl's arrival and a further count of arranging travel within the UK was left on file.