Trafficked The Diary of a Sex Slave (3 page)

Day 10

I used to be a human being, but now I am a sex slave. I will never be clean again. No matter how many times I scrub and scrub, trying to claw off my skin, I will always have their dirt everywhere. On my skin, under my nails, inside me, and etched into my soul.

Last night the girls with dead eyes waited for men in the lounge. When the men came, they chose which slave they wanted, and the girls led them to their rooms in silence.

When I was a little girl I saw a cow being mated, and its haunting cries stayed with me all this time. It was tied in a narrow metal pen so it could not move, and they brought a bull in the pen behind to have sex with it. The cow’s eyes rolled in its head and it made a desperate noise, as if it wanted to escape.

Sex with these men is the same. I am trapped and I am at their mercy. I could not cry like the cow so I stayed silent, but my eyes were closed and I went to another place. I wanted to scream, “No!” but I could not. Behind my eyelids I pictured Liliana, safe with my mother, playing with her favourite soft toy, a dog called Ivan. Ivan is saggy and worn now from years of use. He has one eye missing and his right ear is half falling off, in need of stitching.

Liliana talked to me. She told me she is safe and warm and loved. She misses me and wants me to come home, and when she said this, a silent tear snaked down my cheek. The men did not notice this. They are on top of me, behind me, below me, inside me, but they do not really see me. I am a thing, a toy, an object. A slave who is there purely for them to release their fantasies.

In my daydream about Liliana she was doing well with her reading. My mother had taught her to read a new book. Liliana is bright and learns quickly. She devours stories, and one day I hope she will be a doctor or a lawyer. She had a dusting of sugar around her mouth from eating too many sweet biscuits my mother loves to make.

Ten men had sex with me last night. Part of me feels such strong emotions, and part of me feels like it has died. I am grieving for the part of me that I will never get back. I am ashamed, guilty, disgusted. I feel hatred and anger, but I cannot let that show. I had to pretend I enjoyed it, but it made me feel sick. Physically sick to my core. And there is a part of me that feels numb because I do not want to think of what has happened to me. What
is
happing to me. It seems like I have become a ghost, trapped in a twenty-two year old body, looking out at the world. But no one sees me.

And when I think about Stefan, I know our lovemaking was real. It was gentle and unselfish. I try not to think about that because I miss him too much. And I know I will never be normal again. I will never think about a lover in the same way as I did with Stefan. My scars will not show, but they will torture me forever.

Why did this happen to me? To the other girls? Doesn’t anyone else know what is going on in the world? Why don’t they send someone to help us?

I feel sorry for all the bad things I have done in my life, but I will never believe that this is my fault. I never asked for this, I just wanted to give my family a better life.

Now, when I look in the mirror, I have dead eyes, too.

Day 15

I have not written much because I do not want to describe the things they make me do. You can imagine every depravity and increase it a hundred times, then you will understand.

I try to take comfort in the daylight hours. The girls are allowed out of their rooms, and we can watch TV and make food for ourselves when we are not working. I do not eat much and can see my ribs and hip bones jutting through my skin. My cheeks are gaunt and my hair is dull and lifeless. Every few hours I think about killing myself. Maybe I would be better off dead. But then I think of Liliana and know I can never do it.

Most of the girls do not talk about where they are from or who they used to be before they were stolen.

I trust no one now. How do I know they would not repeat what I say to Angelina or the Rapist?

I do hang around with one girl called Sasha who is from Russia. I never speak about my own situation, but we spend time in each other’s rooms, and she told me how she was trafficked from her small village three years ago. She was living with her mother when two men came late at night and banged on the door. Her mother was working a night shift at a chicken factory so she was not there to try and protect her. When Sasha opened the door, the men knocked her unconscious, and when she woke up, she was in an apartment somewhere. She stayed there for a week as the men and his friends took turns with her. They sold her to a trader in England, and she was forced to work on the street or in massage parlours. Recently she was sold to a sauna, where she was locked in her room twenty-four hours a day. The men who came and had sex with her every night would often be drunk and beat her. The sauna charged £50 per customer, but she never received any money. She tried to tell some of the men what happened to her so they would take pity on her and get her out. None of them did. They did not care how she got there. When she refused to do things for the men, the brothel owner beat her up. Half her hair was pulled out and she had broken fingers and toes where he stamped on them. He broke a rib, as well, that hasn’t healed properly and sticks out at a strange angle. Sometimes she has trouble breathing. As she described this I could actually hear the crunching of bone in her words. She took off the wig she wears and showed me how her hair has not yet grown back properly.

After the beating she was sold to Angelina’s boyfriend and arrived here. In the last three years she has been sold eight times, but she said this is the nicest brothel she has been imprisoned in.

Do I take comfort in that? It is strange but part of me does. There are worse places I could end up.

She told me of another girl she met in England who was also from Moldova. She managed to escape and went to the Moldovan embassy who arranged for her to return to her home, but when she arrived, she discovered she was pregnant. The gang that originally trafficked her tracked her down, raped and beat her so she lost her baby. They killed her family’s pet dog as an extra punishment and threatened to kill her family if she escaped again. She was then re-trafficked back to England. Some of the girls Sasha knew have gone missing suddenly and she thinks they have been murdered.

Sasha wanted to tell me more but I stopped her. That was enough for me to hear for one day. I want to know because it might help me save myself. I want to know what makes people do this to us. I want to know how these things can happen in the twenty-first century. I want to know if I can ever find a way to escape.

Day 20

Last night the police arrived. It was after midnight and I was waiting in the lounge for yet another man to take me. Sasha was there, too, along with six other girls.

When I saw two policemen arrive in uniform with their guns strapped at their sides I thought the house was being raided. For the first time in weeks I had real hope. They would get us out of here and send me back to Moldova. Soon I would have my arms wrapped so tight around Liliana that I would never let go again. These men were going to save us!

Maybe I was wrong about God. Could he have heard my prayers for help?

I felt breathless with excitement, and I had to hold onto a table to steady my legs and stop me collapsing with relief.

‘Oh, thank you,’ escaped from my mouth before I knew I was speaking. My hands flew to my cheeks as I smiled and waited for them to get us out of there. ‘Thank you for helping us,’ I said to the policemen.

Sasha shook her head at me, giving me a silent warning that these men were not our saviours.

The older policeman in the group glanced up at me with mild amusement, and I could see from the look on his face they were not there to help us.

Suddenly I could barely breathe. My heart beat erratically, pumping hard and out of time. A crushing pain squeezed my chest and I fainted.

When I woke up I was in my bedroom. The older policemen was thrusting inside me, his coffee breath suffocating me. Then the other policeman took his turn with me. And when they were finished, the Rapist came to teach me a lesson.

Day 23

I am burning up. My body feels like it is constantly on fire, and yet I am as cold as ice. I have been in bed for three days, unable to move. Sometimes I see Liliana at my bedside. She is holding some hand-picked flowers out to me.

‘Get well soon, Mummy,’ she says.

I reach out for her, but she is too far away. Then I drift into nothingness again.

Day 25

A doctor was here. I do not know what kind of doctor he is. I thought doctors took an oath to heal their patients. How can he know I am here and just leave me with these people?

He said I have a severe urine and kidney infection, and has given me strong antibiotics. I feel sore inside my vagina, and I know something is not right there, too.

He examined me internally and I flinched at his touch. Yet another unwanted man on my skin.

‘You have tears inside,’ he said. ‘In a few days they will heal.’

But what about my heart? Will that heal? I wanted to ask.

I feel like I am dying – burning up from the inside out. I cannot move from my bed, I am too weak, so the doctor has inserted a catheter inside me.

I do not know how much more I can take.

Angelina brought me some chicken soup and bread. She told me they will lose money because I cannot work for a while. Her boyfriend is not happy with me.

‘If you try anything like this again, we will sell you to somewhere much worse,’ she said.

I wanted to scream and cry and yell, and tell her it is not me! It is you, it is your boyfriend, it is the Rapist, it is the policemen. They are the ones who have done bad things, not me. This is not my fault.

Of course, I cannot say that. I just nodded at her so she knew I understood.

When she left I fantasized about escaping. Maybe there is a chance the policemen can help me after all. They just do not know it yet.

Day 26

Sasha keeps me company. She brushes my hair and sings to me. It reminds me of how I used to put Liliana’s hair in bunches and pigtails, making up silly songs to keep her still until I had finished.

I am strong enough to get out of bed for short periods but I do not want to. Sasha sits on my bed and plays cards with me, even though I do not want to talk to anyone. I would rather keep the covers over my head in a darkened cocoon and cry, but Sasha will not take no for an answer.

I think she knows what I am thinking. She chewed on her bottom lip, waiting for me to talk. I did not tell her anything. I would like to think I can trust her, but how do I really know for sure? I cannot tell my plan to anyone.

I need to know what happened to the girls she met in the last three years. I want to ask her outright if any of them escaped forever. Did any of them get their freedom permanently, or were they always dragged back to this life by their pimps and traders? If I ask her that she will know for certain what I am thinking. So instead, I just asked her to talk to me as I lay with my eyes closed. Her voice is soothing, and it did not take long before she was telling me about her life in Russia.

Like me, Sasha thinks about what is happening at home. She said her mother must believe she is dead, and she cannot bear this thought sometimes.

I know how she feels. Liliana and my mother will be frantic with worry that they have not heard from me. I promised to get word to them when I arrived safely in Italy. By now I should have been sending for them to come and live with me. I wonder if Natalia has told them what really happened to me. What she did.

Sasha was going to be a chef. She was the top student on her cookery course. She told me about all the dishes she has created, and it almost made me hungry to taste them. Almost.

As the afternoon wore on she told me about another girl she heard of who escaped. My ears pricked up, but I kept my eyes closed and gave nothing away. This girl was from Romania and worked in a brothel in Spain. One day the brothel was raided by the police and the girl was arrested with all the others and taken into custody. The girl did not tell the police what had happened to her because of threats by her pimp, who told her he would kill her family if she revealed what was really going on. It sounded familiar to me. Sasha said the police even let her pimp visit her in prison, where he repeated his threats to her. The girl did not feel safe enough to explain to the authorities that she had been trafficked, and when the Spanish immigration sent her back to Romania, her pimp found her and took her back again.

Maybe I should give up hope.

Day 27

I have some good news! I got a glimpse of a new girl who arrived here yesterday. She is from Moldova and lived in the next village to mine. Her name is Christina, and we went to school together. I want to ask her if she has news about my mother and Liliana but she is locked in her room. I remember it well. I know what will have happened to her to get her to comply.