BUDDING actress Frida Farrell had moved to London to launch her career – little did she know that an innocent chat with a man on the street would have a horrifying impact on the rest of her life.

Then 22, she was lured into a five-storey building on the capital’s glossy Harley Street, believing she’d be taking part in a photoshoot for a holiday brochure.

But as she entered the flat, her captor slammed the door behind her, locked it and pulled out a knife.

What followed was a three day ordeal in which Frida was drugged and forced to have sex with at least eight men. Luckily she managed to escape after her captor forgot to lock the door.

Now 38 and a single mum, Frida says modern slavery “happens all the time” to “normal” girls just like her.

“If I say ‘sex slavery victim’ to you – you have an image in your head,” she told the Huffington Post.

“But any woman or any girl could be kidnapped and put into this situation. Anyone is for sale, you’re just a body.

“They don’t care where you’re from or what you look like. I was just a normal girl, I was like anyone else in my class. It happened to me because I was walking home that night.”

It’s now been 16 years since Swedish-born Frida’s horrifying ordeal – and she says the problem is worse than ever.

In October we reported there were 212 active investigations into modern sex slavery in the UK underway – with thousands of women like Frida being kept against their will in ordinary houses on ordinary streets.

Last year, a staggering five million girls across the globe were sex trafficked.

“It was the most chilling time of my life,” Frida recalled.

“In movies you see girls screaming and crying but that is not what happens.

“When you are standing in front of a man who is much bigger than you holding a hunting knife you want to make yourself as small and quiet as possible. I just froze. I remember asking to go to the toilet as I thought I was going to lose control of my bowels.”

Once inside the bathroom, Frida told how she tried to squeeze herself out of the laptop-sized window before remembering she was five storeys up.

She recalled thinking: “I’m not going to survive that fall and if I did I would break a lot of bones. What’s worse, the knife or the fall?”

Remarkably she decided to stay calm and feign stomach ache, at which point her captor offered her a glass of milk which she knew was spiked with drugs.

She said: “I just looked at him and knew he had, and he knew that I knew, but I just thought I’m going to drink it. I don’t want to feel the knife, I’d rather just drink it.”

Frida was then ordered to put on some used underwear before she passed out.

Over the next few days she was held in a small, basement flat with barred windows while male “customers” came and went. She estimates there were more than eight but less than 20 paid to have sex with her.

On the fourth night of her ordeal she made a run for it after her captor – who went by the name of Peter – accidentally left the door open.

When she got outside she ran as fast as she could, then got a taxi to her friend’s place.

“I felt so embarrassed afterwards that at first, I didn’t want to tell anyone,” she admitted.

“It took me four days to contact the police. As the days passed, I just felt like I couldn’t explain what I’d been through to my boyfriend, so I avoided him until he realised I didn’t want to see him again.

“He still doesn’t know why I ended it so abruptly, all these years later.”

In the months following her ordeal Frida suffered nightmares and panic attacks, some so bad that her whole body convulsed with the shakes.

“My legs and arms would start shaking when I thought about it,” she recalled.

“One time I had to pull over in the car as couldn’t drive.”

Frida, who now lives in LA with her one-year-old daughter, Mia Rose, has decided to turn her experience into a film, Apartment 407 – in which she stars – in a bid to raise awareness of the plight of those caught up in modern slavery, whether domestic or sexual.

“We set the film in a nondescript city, because it could be anywhere,” she explained.

“Slavery happens in all the big cities – and small ones too. We live in our bubble of the nice bit we’re in, going to our job, meeting friends.

“But under the surface, people are being exploited in the most horrible way, and it is not just people you assume are vulnerable.

“I was a nice girl from a good home and it happened to me.”