Colombian single mother Marcela Loaiza was dreaming big when she set foot in Japan in May 1999. The broker who had arranged her trip told her she would be working as a dancer and make enough money within a few years to pull her family out of poverty back home.

She fell for his words, hook, line and sinker.

Within hours of her arrival, Loaiza, then 21, was standing helplessly on a street in Tokyo's Ikebukuro district, side by side with a group of foreign prostitutes. Like her, they had come to Japan looking for a better life, only to wind up in the hands of the yakuza.