A 12-year-old Thai girl’s three-month nightmare trapped in Japan’s sex industry started with a surprise trip from her homeland and ended with her so demoralized that she brushed aside warnings of arrest.

The ordeal was exacerbated by her mother’s sex-work instructions, scoldings and broken promises to take her home.

All alone in a strange land, the girl saved herself from further abuse after telling authorities: “I want to go back to Thailand.”

Based on the girl’s explanations to investigators and other sources, The Asahi Shimbun retraced the 82 days from her arrival in Japan to her rescue at an immigration bureau in Tokyo.

DEAD FATHER, ABSENT MOTHER

The girl had been living in Thailand with her younger sister at their maternal grandparents’ home and attended a public junior high school there.

Her father died when she was in the second or third grade of elementary school.

Her mother was a sex-industry worker based in Japan who also took overseas jobs in places like Singapore and Taiwan.

The mother rarely stayed with her daughter in Thailand.

However, at the end of June this year, the mother temporarily returned to Thailand and told the daughter, “We’ll go to Japan together and work.”

They arrived in Japan on June 27. It was the girl’s first time in the country.

She was on a 15-day short-term stay visa and could not speak Japanese.

From the airport, they went straight to an unmarked shop inside a building in the Yushima district of Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward.

The business was called a “massage parlor,” but sexual services beyond massages were available for an additional fee, investigative sources said.

“Use a stage name here,” the mother told the girl, explaining what she was expected to do.

“About 20 minutes before closing time, stroke their genitals. That’s all you have to do,” the mother told her daughter.

Everything about the “job” was new to the girl. She soon realized she would have to deal with strangers.

“I don’t want to do this,” she thought. But she told police, “I had to obey my mother.”

Her mother left the next day.

The girl’s living space was a corner of the shop’s kitchen. In between sessions with customers, she slept on a futon laid out on the floorboards.

She saw her mother again on July 10, 12 days after their arrival in Japan.

The mother said: “I’m going back to Thailand tomorrow. I’ll come back for you, so please work at this shop and wait until then.”

The girl also wanted to return home. But she was afraid her mother would get angry, so she stayed quiet.

She also thought, “If I don’t work, my family won’t be able to live.”

Her mother left Japan alone on July 11.

HE ‘NEVER ASKED MY AGE’

The girl continued to work at the shop as instructed. She was told to hand over all of the customers’ money to the shop manager, a 51-year-old man.

The girl told police that the manager “never asked my age.”

According to the Metropolitan Police Department, about 60 customers over 33 days until July 29 paid a total of around 627,000 yen ($4,100) for the girl.

The shop’s manager took the entire amount. After deducting the share for the business, he transferred the remainder to an account under the name of someone connected to the girl’s mother.

The mother sometimes scolded the girl through social networking sites about her work performance.

Other workers at the massage parlor had apparently told the manager about customer complaints concerning the girl. Word had reached her mother.

Unable to endure this life any longer, the girl left the shop in August without telling the manager.

However, the mother instructed her to work at a similar sex-related business outside Tokyo. The girl obeyed.

Her mother told her several times, “I’ll come and get you.”

But she never did.

The girl gradually began to give up hope of seeing her mother again.

“I just want to get back to Thailand somehow, see my grandparents and sister, and go to junior high school,” she thought.

ALL ALONE

Another Thai national told the girl about Japan’s immigration authorities.

But the acquaintance warned the girl that she could be arrested for overstaying the 15-day visa.

“You’ll get caught,” the girl was told.

At that point, she didn’t care.

By herself, the girl visited the Tokyo Regional Immigration Services Bureau in the capital’s Minato Ward on Sept. 16.

She told an officer there, “I want to go back to Thailand.”

After authorities realized what was going on, the girl was placed under protective custody as a victim of human trafficking.

Police, immigration authorities, the Thai Embassy and others have been coordinating efforts on how to handle the case.

The MPD on Nov. 4 arrested the massage shop’s manager, Masayuki Hosono, on suspicion of violating the Labor Standards Law’s working age provisions. He is a resident of Chofu, western Tokyo.

Among the human trafficking cases uncovered by the MPD, the girl is the youngest foreign victim, officials said.