The young woman who told her tale about being caught up in a sex ring and forced to strip and prostitute herself difficult to sit through. I asked her to start at the beginning and she finished 90 minutes later.

It was, she assured me, the short version.

What she had told me she told to the FBI, and it was a harrowing account of hooking up with a group she through were music promoters but instead took her on a cross-country sex tour, with stops in Laurel, New Orleans and El Paso.

She and others, according to the FBI, were forced to work at strip clubs on The Block and elsewhere and have sex for money. ID cards, driver's licenses, cell phones and laptops were confiscated, they said, and they were beaten if they didn't make enough money. All their proceeds went into the hands of their captures, authorities said.

Sunday's story recounts the woman's story and the FBI investigation that led to 10 arrests at a house off Harford Road in Northeast Baltimore, and details what happened in Texas. It also tells how many of the women managed to escape.

The photo above is by The Sun's Gene Sweeney.