By Jess McCabe | 26 August 2007, 16:40

Trafficked women are being auctioned in Cambridgeshire pubs, before being locked away in brothels, reports the Observer.

The discovery was made after police carried out a series of raids on 73 brothels in Cambridgeshire, which resulted in the rescue of seven women - with others fleeing out of fear they would be charged.

The scale of the abuse has horrified the officers and other agencies working with them, who have found women being forced to work in the sex trade in houses in villages as well as city centres, being unable to go out and having sex with up to 60 men a day, earning thousands of pounds for the gangs.

The police have released descriptions of the horrors suffered by some of the women they have rescued:

One described being beaten so hard that she had a broken arm for which she was not allowed medical attention. Another told of being forced to have unprotected sex with up to 25 clients a day. She was refused a testing kit when she thought she might be pregnant, and threatened by security guards with a samurai sword and a baseball bat.