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If she runs away from her life of prostitution, her parents will become sick and die.

At least that's what this Nigerian woman believes. The threatened curse, she thinks, was part of a voodoo rite performed in her homeland just weeks before she was brought to Greece by a prostitution ring.

"I have no doubt in its power," said the petite 24-year-old, who goes by the alias of Maria and described being forced into seven-night-a-week duty at a flophouse brothel on an Athens back street. "Even if I had a doubt, how could I risk the life of my mother and father?"

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