A student who needed to earn money to continue her university degree told how she was flown to the UK and made to have sex with up to 15 men a day.

The now-24-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, wanted to leave the flat where she had sex with the men in Marine Parade, Eastbourne, after two weeks - as they had promised - but was threatened and ordered to stay longer, she told jurors at Hove Crown Court yesterday.

She said the men were “greedy” for money and said they threatened to tell her family including her mother what she was doing if she left.

The woman, flown via easyJet from Budapest to Luton in 2011, said she feared her family would disown her if they knew she was a prostitute - and the men who sold her knew she felt this way.

Describing how she was driven straight from Luton Airport to Eastbourne where she started working hours later, she said: “They [my family] would be so ashamed. They might reject me.

“They would be heartbroken. I have a really tiny family and almost no one.

“I knew [if they found out] I might not be part of it. I thought I might have no one. I was frightened I would be alone.”

The woman, whose family are still clueless as to what she did, told the court she found out about sex work after a friend in her native Hungary started working as a prostitute.

For two weeks she worked for a man, Attila Ruzickska, in Hungary. But it was then decided she would work in England and Ruzickska introduced her to three men including Istvan Toth, she said.

Explaining why she started working in the sex trade, she said she saw it as an “opportunity for earnings to continue [my] studies.”

She said pictures were taken of her in a forest in Hungary and posted on an adult website in the UK.

Initially men were charged £80 for 30 minutes and between £100 and £120 for an hour. This was subsequently reduced to £50 for 30 minutes and £80 for an hour. She also spent nights with men at hotels in Eastbourne for £300.

She said the reductions were made because the men were “clever” and she was no longer a “newbie” - a newcomer - and therefore less popular.

Describing the flat where she lived and worked as “cave-like” and somewhere she would “never forgot”, the woman said she was not allowed to leave.

She laughed when the judge asked her if she was allowed to go out and go sightseeing.

She said she worked between about 10am and 10pm, seven days a week, and earned £100 a week. The experience was not a good one,” she said.

Asked why she did not leave, she added: “I did have anywhere to go. It was my first time in England. I did not know about it. I did not know anyone in England.”

Mate Puskas, 25, of Surrey Street, Croydon, Victoria Brown, 25, of Oakley Road, Bognor, Zoltan Mohacsi, 36, of Cranbrook Road, Ilford and Istvan, 34, and Peter Toth, 28, of St John's Road, Eastbourne, face three counts of conspiracy to control the activities of prostitutes for gain, conspiracy to traffic into the UK and conspiracy to traffic within the UK.

Istvan and Peter Toth, who were not in court, are being tried in their absence.