A GIRL of 15 told how Sheffield nightclubbers helped her flee from a gang of people-traffickers who allegedly shipped her around the UK and forced her into the sex trade.
The youngster, from Lithuania, says she was sold to a string of Albanian men who kept her prisoner in their homes, repeatedly raped her and forced her to work in brothels.
But Sheffield Crown Court heard the girl, who cannot be named, hatched a plan
to escape when one of her alleged captors - Kosovan Ilir Barjami - took her to Kingdom nightclub in Barker's Pool.
The girl told the court: "I went to the toilet but each time Ilir followed me. I was sitting in the toilet and I was crying. Some girls asked me what was the matter. I said I couldn't escape from one man and they asked me who he was.
"We left the toilet - the three girls came with me. One held me by the arm while the other two went to speak to Ilir.
"I quickly ran away to the exit. Then I was running through the city centre and I had to stop because I was breathless. I asked a man where the police are and he showed me the way."
The girl, who was allegedly tricked into travelling to the UK after being told she would work in a restaurant, ran into West Bar police station.
Barjami, aged 25, had allegedly tried to get the girl to work in the Omega Sauna, in Attercliffe, after buying her for £1,500 from Macedonian Shaban Maka. Barjami is also accused of raping the girl three times a day at his flat in Norwich Row, Park Hill.
Jurors heard that in the weeks before the girl arrived in Sheffield, she was driven around the UK by Maka and his Lithuanian girlfriend Lina Yunel, both of Norwich Row, Park Hill. They eventually sold her to a number of Albanian men for between £3,000 and £4,000.
Describing one occasion when she refused to sleep with one of her new "owners", the girl said: "Lina started shouting at me. She said, 'Are you a princess?'. They all started shouting at me so I went to the toilet and started cutting my veins. I said to them, 'Just kill me'."
Maka, 24, denies a charge of trafficking into the UK for sexual exploitation and two of trafficking around the UK for sexual exploitation. He pleaded guilty to two other charges of trafficking around the UK for sexual exploitation.
Yunel, 28, denies a charge of trafficking into the UK for sexual exploitation and four of trafficking around the UK for sexual exploitation.
Barjami denies trafficking into the UK for sexual exploitation, one of trafficking around the UK for sexual exploitation, another of false imprisonment and four counts of rape.
Xhevahir Pisha, 21, of Coventry, denies false imprisonment and trafficking around the UK for sexual exploitation.
The trial was adjourned.
