The largest example of sex slavery and government condoned human trafficking took place before and during WWII. Starting in 1932 in the Chinese city of Shanghai. The Japanese army, with the knowledge of the government, instituted a policy of providing women for the Japanese troops to decrease the wanton raping of Chinese women. The army set up brothels called “comfort stations”. The sex workers were officially called “comfort women”, but the soldiers mockingly called them “human toilets” or “female ammunition”. The excuses given by Japanese officials at the time included reducing atrocities against citizens (20,000-80,000 women were raped at Nanking when the city fell), reducing venereal disease among the soldiers (it actually had the opposite effect), and satisfying the soldiers’ sexual needs in a controlled environment.
The estimates of how many women were forced to prostitute themselves range from 20,000 – 400,000 in around 125 brothels. The numbers are unclear because of the destruction of documents by the Japanese before the war ended. The women were mostly Chinese, Koreans, and Filipinos. The women, some as young as 12, were acquired in a variety of ways. Some were kidnapped either from their homes or from the streets. Others were lured by promised jobs, like nursing or factory work. Some were “bought” from their parents in was promised as an indentured servitude situation.
The comfort women were treated abominably. Besides rape, the women were often brutalized. A comfort woman might service up to 60 men per day. In some comfort stations, the women cooked, cleaned, and did laundry during the day and then were raped at night. An estimated 90% did not survive the war. Some committed suicide. Others were killed before the Japanese retreated. Those that did returned home in shame. Most of them refused to talk about their experience.
The story of the comfort women was not widely known until the 1990s. Finally, some of the survivors told their stories. The Japanese government denied knowledge of the comfort station until 1991 when it acknowledged the existence of comfort stations. In 1993, the government admitted to coercion in acquiring the women and its role in dishonoring the women. Later, the government recanted. The brief mention in textbooks was removed. On March 29, 1993, the South Korean government agreed to pay financial support to women who had been forced to have sex with Japanese troops during World War II. In 1995, the Japanese government set up the Asian Women’s Fund to pay reparations, but the funding came from donations! It was severely criticized by activists and ended in 2007. The Japanese government agreed to pay reparations in 2015, but refused to apologize.
https://www.history.com/news/comfort-women-japan-military-brothels-korea
https://www.britannica.com/topic/sexual-abuse
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