The House of Everlasting Love

"Are you ready to go to work now?"

This is what they asked Bella (not her real name) after they had punished her for days on end in the dungeon of the notorious House of Everlasting Love. This was routine: Girls would work, they would reach a point where they couldn't take it any longer, they'd be taken downstairs for punishment, and then they'd go back to work again.

[Bella was 20 years old when she entered the House of Everlasting Love]

Sometimes I feel like giving up, but then I meet survivors like Bella and I know my work must continue. I am just one person, trying to fight a global cabal of wealth, power and corruption - the kind which always creates the most obscene sadism. I know my chances of success are low, and that the most likely consequence of my hunt will be my death, or worse. But spending a few hours with Bella is enough for me to keep going.

It is no doubt a sinister, self-satisfied joke among the members of the House of Everlasting Love that its name can be abbreviated to provide its definition: HELL. That is exactly what it is. Hell is real, Bella has lived there, and it is full of demons.

Bella's background is the typical story of victims. She grew up in poverty, ran away from an abusive home, and became stuck in the cycle. She was young, pretty, and nobody was going to help her. Bella was only a couple of months into prostituting herself when she was recruited by a gang of pimps in her local city.

Bella was determined to make a better life for herself. She was resourceful and cunning. She would pay her pimps enough to keep their focus elsewhere, staying out of the line of fire, while quietly saving and hiding as much money as she could in a safe place.

"I thought if I just had enough for a couple months, I could get a place and start one of those courses where you work and study at the same time maybe. I wanted to do catering or take a cooking course, I was always the one to feed everybody at home. I was good at it, like, I could make a meal out of basically nothing."

[Bella was a bright student, a skilled cook and loved animals. She even invented her own recipe for a type of pet food that was specifically designed for cats with common medical conditions to assist a relative who couldn't afford the prescribed foods from grocery store brands.]

Bella confided her plan to another girl working for the pimps, who sold her out in the naive hope that the pimps would split Bella's hidden money with her afterwards. The House of Everlasting Love is no secret among criminals. Bella says the pimps would regularly use threats of 'being sold to the House' as a way of keeping them in line.

Most working girls believed the House to be an urban myth; a ghost story meant to scare the new girls and limit the deception that was a requirement for Bella to make any money beyond mere subsistence. When the pimps found out about Bella's hidden stash, she was driven across the country to New York city, where they exchanged her for money.

[Bella's pimps sold her to the House of Everlasting Love, knowing what it was and what would happen to her there]

The House of Everlasting Love is a brothel. Plain and simple. To call it anything else is to participate in the delusions of grandeur held by its insideous owner. Yes, you guessed it: Mr. Pink. I had hoped Bella could provide me with something - anything - that would help me in my hunt for him. But once again, the only thing bigger than Pink's ego is his determination to remain hidden from the world.

"They didn't all wear masks. But he did. Always. When Mm-aster... s-sorry-when... Mister Pink was with me. He wore a mask. He had one of those things, I don't... I don't know what you call them. It was a thing that made his voice go static, like in the movies, like where the bad guys send out a ransom tape or something."

Talking to Bella about Mr. Pink was a difficult task. I couldn't push too hard or she would retreat back into herself. I'm not proud to say there were moments in our interview where I failed to thread this needle sensitively. I just hope Bella can one day forgive me, and understand my motivation is only to ensure Pink is one day caught and made to face his crimes.

[Bella was considered a personal favourite of Mr. Pink]

The clientele at the House of Everlasting Love included some of most influential people in the world. There were often celebrities, politicians, business leaders and other high profile figures staying at the House. Despite the efforts of authorities, psychologists and other professionals supporting Bella's recovery, she remains adamant that it's not safe for her to reveal any of their identities.

Working at the House meant being available to everyone, at any time, for anything they wanted. Bella was trained, punished, used and abused repeatedly throughout her experience. But the bizarre twist to life in the House is that it behaved more like a private members club than a place to buy and sell sex. Bella would be raped and abused by men who would moments later give her cocktail orders and instruct her to unpack their bags.

"You don't get it, they didn't see us like that. For them, slaves were just... it was just a normal thing. They'd bring their own slaves to the House, or they might stay a whole week and not lay a finger on anybody... Or they'd do something so shocking... so obscene... that... just... it was not even worth mentioning to them. Nobody would notice, nobody would care..."

[Slavery was so embedded in the House's environment, that it almost felt mundane]

[Bella was once left restrained overnight because her abuser had simply forgotten about her after pausing their session to take a call from his client]

The House of Everlasting Love was a place of extreme decadence. Its members and guests would come and go as they pleased, there would always be luxurious rooms available. Slaves like Bella would be made to clean and prepare dozens of large, multi-room suites, just to see them go completely unused before returning to prepare them again a few days later. She would open bottles of wine and champagne costing thousands of dollars, only to throw it away when nobody came to drink it. If money was ever discussed, it was never in relation to any service offered by the House, the members operated on a level where money was simply not relevant any more.

The primary, grotesque benefit to the House of Everlasting Love, was that it was a brothel where anything goes. Bella was not only put in the House's dungeon when she needed to be punished, members would regularly request it. It was a curated space, well equipped to satisfy the horrific depravity of its memberships' every desire.

"I was holding this ashtray... like, that was my only job. I was just kneeling beside his chair, holding up this stupid fucking ashtray for him, while he had a hundred girls paraded into the room. He didn't like any of them. I was just so scared... I kept thinking... what if he chooses me? What if he turns around to look at me when he flicks his cigar, and decides to just take me in there instead of one of them..."

[In the Dungeon, the members of the House could indulge in any fantasy they wanted]

[Bella was punished brutally by one politician, who requested her specifically because he reminded her of his own daughter]

[Every time Bella was made to enter the Dungeon, she believed it would be her last]

It is impossible to quantify or define the toll serving in the House of Everlasting Love took on any girl's life. Bella said she reached a point where she no longer thought of escape, she simply kept on existing. Knowing that working upstairs was slightly better than a life of being tortured downstairs. There was however a subset of people in the House which Bella was particularly afraid of, and most of all, she was afraid of becoming one herself.

The 'Angels' as they were known were a group of slaves whose minds had been so thoroughly distorted by their experiences, that they had started to become twistedly devoted to their own slavery. They would show enthusiasm and pleasure at the things being done to them, and encourage more sadistic treatement of both themselves and others. In particular, they appeared to idolise and worship Mr. Pink, treating him like a wise, benevolent father figure.

[Bella was repeatedly targeted by the Angels for refusing to join their flock]

When I asked if Bella ever considered becoming an Angel herself, I had incorrectly assumed this to be some kind of 'senior position' among the slaves at the House of Everlasting Love. Something which Pink used as a way to maintain his brutal regime of control and domination over the women he enslaved. I have found various evidence that Mr. Pink uses intensive conditioning and training tecniques to psychological warp the minds of his victims.

For instance, I observed that Bella struggled to use Mr. Pink's name when we spoke. Every time she used it, she would grip her left hand into a fist, and her arm would tense up. I would later learn from her clinicians that Bella experiences agonising, physical pain in her shoulder and chest whenever she does not refer to Pink as her 'Master.'

Bella's response to my question, was somehow even more troubling than that.

"No... no, you don't understand. My M-... M... Mr... He didn't call them that. They weren't 'his Angels' or anything. It wasn't a real part of it. The Angels didn't get rewards, they didn't have it better or easier than anyone else. They weren't given freedom or power, they weren't in charge of us. Nobody cared that there was this, like, gang forming inside of the slaves. We called them Angels, because they believed themselves to be his angels. They... they... literally believed that... Master was a God."

[The Angels enthusiastically celebrated their slavery, they believed Mr. Pink to be their literal God and saviour]

The biggest twist in Bella's story, is her eventual escape from the House of Everlasting Love. She didn't escape. She was let go.

"They took me outside. I didn't know why, I-I thought I might be sold again. They left me in, I can't remember, it was a park. They got back in the car, and then they drove off. I thought it was a test, like, maybe they were tricking me or something. I waited, and... they just didn't come back."

Only a fool would believe Bella's release had anything to do with mercy. It is an outlandishly clumsy thing for Mr. Pink to have done, and exposes the world's elite to the most damning of discoveries about them should Bella or any other women enslaved by the House make allegations against them. In attempting to find its location in New York city, the authorities are yet to identify any sites which match the details Bella has given.

One ugly theory is that Bella's release, and the network's subsequent exposure (or more accurately it's lack of), is serving as some kind of hideous advertisement for the House of Everlasting Love. That even with a former slave now free to declare her abuser's names and the authorities looking for the worlds most exclusive brothel - it is still able to operate, and the members are still freely inflicting every cruelty imaginable to the poor souls trapped within its gilded walls.

I can only tell you this: Mr. Pink is not a God, but Hell is real.

[Bella was ominously released from the The House of Everlasting Love, 666 days after she was sold]