Rachelle, Mancuso's biological daughter, says she shares a painful bond with Masha. The house where he and Masha lived has since been sold to a new family. He also pleaded guilty to the horrible sex crimes he committed against Masha and was sentenced to serve 35 to 70 years in prison. Two years ago, Matthew Mancuso was sentenced to 15 years on federal pornography charges. Sergeant Zaglifa says that to gain proper perspective on the severity of child pornography, it's important to call them "child sex abuse images." "When those images are being made," says Sergeant Zaglifa, "that's sex abuse in progress." He offers his expert advice for how parents can protect their children: "The number one thing is: No chat rooms." Her rescue, says Sergeant Zaglifa, was an unexpected reward for what he calls the "physically and emotionally draining" work of capturing child predators. Working with other agents, he traced Mancuso's Internet address to a location near Pittsburgh, where he was later arrested.ĭuring their investigation, police officials had no way of knowing that the little girl in the photographs was Mancuso's adopted daughter. Sergeant Zaglifa says his instinct told him this man was an absolute danger to children. Posing as a pedophile, Chicago area police officer Mike Zaglifa discovered Mancuso in an online chat room. Back in the states, Masha expected a nice American home with a bedroom all her own. No phone calls were made to his ex-wife or to his biological daughter. What she didn't know was the adoption agency failed to properly check her new father's background. But nothing could have been farther from the truth. Mancuso seemed like her knight in shining armor. He visited Masha several times at the orphanage, took her to nice dinners, and bought her candy. After months of waiting, Mancuso traveled to Russia to meet his new daughter. He contacted a New Jersey adoption agency requesting information on 5-year-old Caucasian girls, and chose Masha from a videotape. Meanwhile, 41-year-old Matthew Mancuso, a divorced father in Pennsylvania, was looking for a little girl to adopt. Soon after recovering from her traumatic ordeal, Masha was sent to an orphanage where she prayed that a good family would come to rescue her. Her own mother tried to kill her when she was only 4 years old by stabbing her in the back of the neck with a kitchen knife. She was born in southern Russia to an alcoholic mother and a father she never knew. A tank top simply doesn’t pay the rent.At 13 years old, Masha has already survived the unthinkable. “Many younger, less established models are working in debt to their agencies, and they struggle to cover their day-to-day expenses. “We believe that models, like all workers, deserve to be paid for their work,” Ms. Sara Ziff, an American model and filmmaker, recently initiated the Model Alliance to protect and enforce models by devising a Models’ Bill of Rights. Some are unpaid or paid only with clothes, and some find themselves in debt - which makes them vulnerable to predation. However, even here in the United States, it’s astonishing how vulnerable young models are to exploitation. Indeed, some young Russian models find international success - as evidenced on the catwalks of New York Fashion Week. Masha’s fate is currently unknown our recent efforts to contact her have not been successful, but her Facebook page suggests she is still an aspiring model. Arbaugh initially approached us and suggested we make a film, which became a feature-length documentary, “Girl Model.” She wrote to us: “I have been traveling and documenting in Russia and Ukraine the journey of these young girls that become prostitutes and fashion models, or the foggy lines that exist between both.” Our feature documentary, from which this Op-Doc is adapted, traverses these foggy lines. When we filmed Masha in 2009, the scouts said that these girls - often poor in a society of extreme income inequality - are desirable not just for their looks but because they are malleable and easier to guide and direct. The Op-Doc also introduces Ashley Arbaugh, a former American model turned international model scout, who seeks out teenagers with her Russian comrades. Rural Siberia is a thriving location for scouts hoping to recruit teenage girls as young as 12 and export them overseas. Sometimes hundreds of girls audition at these model castings other times a few dozen show up. In this Op-Doc video we present Masha, a 13-year-old aspiring model who attends an open casting call in Siberia, Russia.