www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/04/25/wbos25.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/04/25/ixworld.html
Kathryn Bolkovac, 41, said women were forced to dance naked in Bosnian bars frequented by UN police officers. Mrs Bolkovac is using a British employment tribunal to bring her case of unfair dismissal from an American recruitment agency which has an office in the UK. The former American policewoman claims she was sacked because she sent an email to Jacques Paul Klein, the chief of UN mission in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which highlighted the sexual exploitation of women by those who had been sent to protect them from the sex trade. Details of the email, sent in October 2000, were given to the tribunal at Southampton, Hants, yesterday. In it, Mrs Bolkovac, a mother of three from Lincoln, Nebraska, claims that bars were frequented by UN police officers and other humanitarian workers who availed themselves of women forced into prostitution. The tribunal has heard that her employer, the US-based agency DynCorp, which is registered with the State Department to provide American police officers to work on humanitarian and peacekeeping duties, admits that there was a problem with officers using prostitutes and that one was sacked for paying for a woman to live with him to provide sexual services. But the company, which has an office in Salisbury, Wilts, denies that it sacked Mrs Bolkovac for exposing the abuse and said that she was dismissed for time-sheet irregularities. In her email, Mrs Bolkovac said that women and girls were handed over to bar owners and told to perform sex acts to pay for their costumes. After this time they are told to dance naked on table tops and sit with clients. In April 2001, she was sacked for allegedly falsifying her time sheets, which she denies. Giving evidence to the tribunal, Mrs Bolkovac said she had discovered "extensive use of brothels" by UN police and other peacekeepers. She said she also found that international staff were helping local police to sell women for the sex trade and she feared this was being "covered up". She claimed that Mike Stiers, the international police task force's deputy commissioner, had flippantly dismissed victims of human trafficking as "just prostitutes". This attitude led many members of the peacekeeping mission to believe it was acceptable to use sex slaves and go to brothels, she said. Spencer Wickham, the head of DynCorp, has told the tribunal he sacked three police officers for using prostitutes. The tribunal is taking place in Britain because DynCorp contracts state they are governed by UK employment law. DynCorp's Bosnia site manager, Pascal Budge, said that after Mrs Bolkovac's email was sent, he circulated a memo warning officers they would be sent home if caught using prostitutes. But Mrs Bolkovac called an investigation by DynCorp into her allegations "inadequate".
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