Brazilian Instagram influencer jailed for trafficking and slavery

“It was very difficult to, you know, get out of the situation because she holds your money,” Sol told the BBC.

“It was terrifying. I thought something could happen to me because she had all my information, my passport, my driving licence.”

But Sol says she realised she needed to somehow escape after overhearing a phone call in which Torres was telling another client she must work as a prostitute in Brazil as a “punishment”.

Sol was able to leave with the help of an ex-boyfriend.

Meanwhile, the guns Torres’ husband kept began to regularly feature on her Instagram stories, and became a source of fear for the remaining women.

Around this time, Desirrê says Torres tried to persuade her to swap the strip club for work as a prostitute. She says she refused and the following day Torres took her on a surprise day out to a gun range.

Scared, Desirrê says she eventually gave in to Torres’ demand.

“Many questions haunted me: ‘Could I stop whenever I wanted?’” Desirrê writes in her book.

“And if the condom broke, would I get a disease? Could [the client] be an undercover cop and arrest me? What if he killed me?”

If the women didn’t meet the earning quotas that Torres set, which had risen from $1,000 (£782) to $3,000 (£2,345) a day, they were not allowed to return to the house that night, they say.

“I ended up sleeping on the street several times because I couldn’t reach that,” Desirrê adds.

Bank statements, seen by the BBC, show Desirrê transferring more than $21,000 (£16,417) into Torres’ account in June and July 2022 alone. She says that she was forced to hand over a substantially higher figure in cash.

Prostitution is illegal in Texas and Desirrê says Torres would threaten to report her to the police if she ever talked about wanting to stop.

In September, friends and family of Desirrê and Letícia back in Brazil launched social media campaigns to find them, having become increasingly concerned following months without contact.

By this time, they were barely recognisable. Their brunette hair had been dyed platinum blonde to eerily match Torres’. Desirrê says by this point all her phone contacts had been blocked and she obeyed the influencer’s orders without question.

As the Instagram page @searchingDesirrê gained momentum, the story dominated news outlets in Brazil. Desirrê’s friends even worried she might have been murdered, and Letícia’s family put out desperate pleas for their safe return home.

Ana, having lived with Torres in 2019, said alarm bells rang as soon as she saw the news stories. She says she immediately guessed that “[Torres] was keeping other girls”.