The road to Masha's rescue began hundreds of miles away in the Chicago suburb of Palos Heights. So I just didn't tell anybody, 'cause I was afraid.' A Desperate Search by Police 'He wouldn't tell me what it would be, but he'd just say something bad would happen. 'He'd tell me not to tell anyone, or else something bad would happen,' Masha said. To keep her silent he used rewards - as well as threats. 'But it always came back to me - couldn't stop it.' 'I'd make myself think of other things when it was happening,' she said. And then, a few days later, he started raping her repeatedly - and taking sexually explicit photographs. Then he started touching her private parts. The first couple of nights, he touched her leg or chest. When it was time for bed that first night, he didn't send her to her room - he told her to get in bed with him. The nightmare began when Masha flew home with Mancuso to his modest, middle-class house on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. 'I remember asking him if I was gonna get a mother, and he'd say that he wasn't married, and that he didn't think I would,' she said.

But there was also something strange about him. Masha said Mancuso was friendly and brought her gifts. He said he wanted to adopt a 5- or 6-year-old Caucasian girl, and Mancuso picked Masha out from a videotape sent to him by the adoption agency. Matthew Mancuso had found Masha through an adoption agency in Cherry Hill, N.J. Then one day, a divorced 41-year-old American showed up saying he wanted to adopt her. It was a sad and desperate existence, but because adoption is rare in Russia, Masha expected to live there until she turned 18.

Masha babko sister