Trafficked: The Terrifying True Story of a British Girl Forced into the Sex Trade (21 page)

My mother often told me that there was nothing I couldn't talk about to her, but I knew she was wrong and that some things would have upset her too much. So I was grateful when Robin put me in touch with someone who specialised in counselling women who'd been raped. I talked to the counsellor about what had happened and about how it had changed my opinions about myself and my life and everything that used to feel safe and familiar to me. But although she was very nice and the talking did
help, I began to feel as though she didn't really understand. It wasn't that what had happened to me was any worse than being raped; it was just that it was different.

Part of the problem was that I couldn't seem to get past the fact that I hadn't tried to escape from Kas. Even in France, when he'd left me on my own for several days, I'd carried on working and doing all the things he'd told me to do. And although I knew that it was because of the fear he'd so carefully and deliberately instilled in me, I still felt as though I'd somehow colluded in what had happened to me – despite knowing, deep down, that nothing could have been further from the truth.

Even before Italy, I hadn't been particularly happy to be the person I was – I had at least my fair share of ‘emotional baggage' from my childhood – but I'd have given anything to be that person again now. In just six months, everything had changed and in my mind I wasn't
anyone
; I was in some sort of limbo, without any real sense of my own identity.

I often thought about Erion and how different my life would have been if I'd gone to Albania and married him that summer – which seemed like a lifetime ago. When I think about it now, I realise it might not have worked out well, but I became almost obsessed by regret because I'd let him down and, after Italy, when I felt as though I was completely lost and my future was a dark, empty hole, I was convinced I'd taken the wrong road at that particular crossroads in my life.

I couldn't stop thinking about Erion and one evening I went with my friend Serena to the bar where he used to be the manager. His best friend, Adnan, still worked there and I asked him if he'd heard anything from Erion.

‘I just want to know that he's all right,' I said.

Adnan looked at me intently for a moment and then sighed as he answered, ‘So you don't know?'

‘What do you mean? Know
what
?' I asked, suddenly feeling sick and dreading what he was going to tell me.

‘He's back,' Adnan said.

My heart gave a lurch and started to thud against my ribcage. ‘How is he?' I asked. ‘What's he doing? Where's he working?' My eyes had filled with tears and I felt an almost physical sense of hurt at the thought that he'd come back to England and hadn't got in touch with me.

Adnan shrugged his shoulders and looked away from me. ‘I'm sorry, I can't tell you,' he said. ‘You really hurt him, you know.'

‘I
do
know,' I told Adnan. ‘And you have no idea how sorry I am and how much I've always regretted what happened. Is he with someone? Has he met someone else?'

‘Please, don't ask me.' Adnan shook his head. ‘That's a conversation the two of you need to have. I don't want to hurt you.'

Erion hates me, and I don't blame him
, I thought. But I knew I couldn't just walk away and try to forget about him.

‘How can we have any conversation at all if you won't tell me where he is?' I asked. ‘Please, please help me, Adnan.
You don't know what this means to me. I
have
to talk to Erion.'

‘Okay,' Adnan sighed again. ‘Give me your phone number and I'll give it to him, but that's all I can do. If he doesn't want to talk to you, you'll just have to accept that.'

A few minutes later, Serena and I walked out of the club and on to the street and I suddenly stopped, clutched her arm and whispered, ‘Oh my God, he's there!'

‘Who? What is it?' Serena tried to follow my gaze.

‘It's Erion. At the pedestrian lights, on the other side of the road,' I said. ‘I've
got
to talk to him.'

I don't know if he saw me before he crossed the road, but as soon as he reached the pavement I called out his name. When he turned and looked at me, his eyes were cold and empty and I felt as though someone had stamped on my heart.

‘Sorry, love,' he said. ‘Do I know you? I think you must have mistaken me for someone you used to know.' And he walked away.

Serena put her arm around my waist and pushed me down to sit on a low brick wall beside the pavement. I felt dazed and sick, but as soon as I could walk again, I scurried home to hide, like an injured animal.

It was a normal reaction for someone who's been badly hurt
, I told myself.
He doesn't know why I abandoned him, so of course he's going to want to hurt me in return. But how will I ever be able to explain to him what happened?
So I
decided to write him a letter. I didn't tell him about Italy; I just wrote about the pressure I'd been under from all sides after I'd come out of hospital, and how I'd been so confused that I hadn't known what to do. I told him I was sorrier than he could ever imagine and I begged him to give me the chance to explain it to him face to face. And at the end of the letter I wrote my phone number and the words ‘It's in your hands.'

Two days later, Erion phoned me and we arranged to meet the following evening. I couldn't concentrate on anything for the rest of the day, and as I lay in bed that night, watching the minutes and hours tick slowly away, I wondered if he would ever be able to forgive me.

I must have looked even paler and more exhausted than normal by the time we met for dinner the next night, and when I asked Erion how he could have said what he said to me at the traffic lights, he answered, ‘To be honest, I almost didn't recognise you. I didn't expect to see you. Someone told me you'd gone abroad, so I was taken by surprise when I suddenly came face to face with you. And I was shocked by the way you look. I don't want to hurt your feelings, Sophie, but you're so skinny and your cheeks are so sunken, you look like a heroin addict. And all your beautiful hair has gone! What happened to you? Why do you look so different?'

I couldn't tell him the truth, but he seemed to accept that I didn't want to talk about it in any detail, and as we sat in the restaurant, talking and crying, it felt as though
we'd never been apart. I told him how desperately sorry I was that I hadn't gone to Albania as we'd planned, and how I'd wished every single day since then that I could go back and do it all differently. And, from that moment, we were together again.

I don't think I could have shared my life with any other man at that time, but Erion had known me before I'd become Jenna, so to him I was the ‘me' I used to be; the ‘me' I was trying so hard to find again. I felt safe with him. Sometimes I almost forgot about Italy and sometimes I almost allowed myself to believe I could pick up the life I used to have and start living it again.

Erion and I spent most of our time together. Although he kept his own flat, he came to mine after he finished work almost every night and I told myself it was just like it used to be between us. But I think I knew that wasn't really true and that it was too much to expect anything ever to be the same again. And, as if to confirm those fears, Erion said to me one day, a couple of months after we'd re-met, ‘You've changed so much. You're always jumpy and frightened. Why do you always apologise for things you don't need to be sorry about? What do you think I'm going to say or do if you make yourself a drink before you've made one for me? You know I would never even shout at you, let alone hit you. So why do I sometimes feel as though you're afraid of me? You have to tell me what happened to you, Sophie. I need to know, because I can't go on living like this.'

We were having lunch in a café and I wiped the damp sweat from my hands on to my napkin before whispering, ‘I don't know
how
to tell you. You're going to hate me. You won't want to be with me anymore.'

Erion reached across the table and I put one of my hands in his.

‘Look at me, Sophie,' he said. ‘No matter what you tell me, I don't care, because nothing you can say will ever change the way I feel about you. I don't think you've ever understood what you mean to me and how much I love you.'

So, with tears streaming down my face, I told him, and he cried too. And then he said angrily, ‘I want to kill him. I hate him. If it had happened to my own sister I don't think it would hurt as much as this does. But I think I knew already – I just needed you to say it.
I'm
here now, though, and no one will ever hurt you again.'

And that was all I wanted, to be with Erion. So why didn't I feel happy?

Perhaps the truth was that although being with Erion made me as contented as it was possible for me to be, despite the fact that I was still having regular sessions with the rape counsellor, I didn't seem to be getting any closer to putting my life back on track. I knew I needed more help, but I didn't know what sort of help or where to find it. And then one day, about six months after I'd come home from Italy, I was searching the internet for
anything
that might hold the answer when I came across a website for a charity
called STOP THE TRAFFIK. I went back to it repeatedly over the next couple of days until I finally plucked up the courage to pick up the phone and call the number.

I'd been concentrating so hard on just
doing
it that I hadn't thought about what I was going to say, and when a woman answered the phone, I blurted out, ‘I really need help.' The woman's name was Bex, and after talking to her that day, I spoke to her on the phone regularly for five or six months until we finally met in person. The charity STOP THE TRAFFIK doesn't deal with victim support, but Bex talked to me as a friend and as we gradually built up a relationship, I felt as though I'd at last found someone who really understood how I felt.

I'd already been wondering if I might be able to use my own experiences to help other people when Bex asked if I'd be interested in talking to some teenage girls who were living in a children's home and who were thought to be at potential risk from local pimps and traffickers. The prospect of speaking in public about what had happened to me was terrifying, but Bex had been so supportive and so amazing that I was determined not to let her down.

It took three or four weeks for the charity to do various checks into my background to make sure I was who I claimed to be, and then, one afternoon, I walked into a room in London and came face to face with about 10 girls, all of whom looked at me with varying degrees of disinterest, indifference or open hostility. I had to grip the back of a chair to stop myself turning round and bolting back out
of the door. I realised I must look like an idiot to them, with my neatly combed hair, carefully applied make-up and smart, work-type clothes, and I could almost hear them thinking,
What the fuck does this skinny little white girl know about our lives and all the crap things that have happened to us?
So I think they were shocked when I told them my story.

Talking about what had happened to me was really difficult. I felt self-conscious and out of my depth and I didn't know where to start. So I just told it from the beginning, sometimes crying, however hard I tried not to, and then feeling a warm sensation spreading throughout my body when I realised that some of the girls were crying too.

When I'd finished, they started firing questions at me and one girl threw her arms around my neck and hugged me as she told me she was certain I was going to do great things in my life – which made me cry again. They were really sweet girls and it suddenly struck me that, just as people might look at me and never imagine I'd worked as a prostitute, they must look at some of those girls and see only the alienation and disaffection that hides their own fears and hurt.

There were two things I wanted to get across to those young girls that day: that they need to be very careful who they trust, and that when bad things happen to you, it
is
possible to pick up the threads of your life – or even to create a new one – and carry on. In reality, however, I was struggling to come to terms with my own inability to trust
anyone – particularly men – unless I knew them very well. Even now when I meet someone new, I'm thinking,
Why are you talking to me? What's your real motive? Who are you?
And although I hate being that way, I just can't help it.

Not long after I'd talked to the girls, I was asked by STOP THE TRAFFIK if I'd like to go to a conference and hand a petition to the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Maria Costa. My immediate reaction was to say no, because I knew I'd be so nervous I'd probably do it all wrong. But then, when I thought about it and about why they'd asked me, I thought that, maybe, if I could overcome my fears and do it, I might be able to use my own experiences to help them achieve something positive.

I hadn't been able to face the prospect of giving evidence against Kas that would have allowed the police to prosecute him and would probably have resulted in him being sent to prison – which is where I knew he deserved to be. But, by doing what I could to support STOP THE TRAFFIK's ongoing campaign to try to raise people's awareness of trafficking in all its various forms, I felt that at least I was doing
something
that might be of benefit to other people.

Despite themselves, the girls at the children's home had been intrigued to know what a well-educated, articulate, ‘middle-class', young, white English woman could possibly have to say that might be relevant to them. And I realised that it was exactly those characteristics that might help to change the assumption made by many people that only
poor girls from primarily Third World and Eastern European countries are trafficked and that therefore trafficking isn't something that poses a risk to their own daughters or to anyone else they know. So, full of trepidation, I agreed to go to the conference.