AN ABUSED woman who was trafficked and sold as a sex slave has revealed she was doused in petrol and nearly set on fire during years of horrific abuse.
Jenny, whose name was changed, met her 70 year-old neighbor ‘Keith’.
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He would invite her round to his house, give her lifts to school, and buy her gifts.
As Jenny grew older, her sick neighbor began to insist on sex as a reward for his kindnesses.
Jenny, now 23 years old, explained that the neighbour demanded sex in return for his favors.
“I said I didn’t want to.
He said, “It’ll take only a few seconds” and that he was special to us and that if he was special and we appreciated each other’s actions, then we would have sex.
They would pass you around. They would bring in their friends and the network grew.
Jenny
“I think from the first time that’s when he felt he owned you or made his mark on you.”
As the months passed, Keith introduced Jenny to more men to have sex with.
Those men would be “more forceful and violent” while offering Jenny drugs and alcohol.
She explained that men would offer her marijuana, offer you drugs, offer you alcohol, and were more violent and forceful than she.
“They’d pass you around. The men would then bring their friends in and then the network got bigger.”
At 17, Keith moved away and she was pawned off to a gang of men, who illegally traded her as a sex slave.
Although she was never paid – except in phone credit, cigarettes, or drugs – the gang made a lot of money out of her services, while she endured unimaginable horror, and was thrown out of the family home.
After numerous hospital visits to treat her horrific injuries and suffering a miscarriage, Jenny tried to seek help, explaining: “My feelings of utter desolation grew. I tried to escape but couldn’t find a way out. Every exit was blocked.
“Even if I stepped just a few yards on my own, I was followed. When I ran away to domestic abuse refuges, I couldn’t stay long because I didn’t fit their remit of a domestic abuse victim, they classed me as a sex worker.”
TURNING POINT
The turning point came when police picked Jenny up after she was doused with petrol, thrown out of a car and nearly set on fire by the gang.
Victim Support identified her as a victim to trafficking and advised her to call the Salvation Army’s confidential Referral Helpline, which is available 24 hours a day.
She recalled: “At first, I was too scared to believe my nightmare could be over.
It helped that volunteers took my cell phone. This released me from constant threats. I also was far from home so I stopped worrying about whether every car was following me.
The relief was not easy to take in. I was finally in a safe house, with a clean bed, warm shower and someone to make me a cup of tea without asking for payment in sexual favours.”
At 23 years old Jenny is now free and hopes to study at university so she can teach people how to spot and stop grooming.
She said: “The thought that I might be able to prevent even one case drives me. But first, I’m learning how to live normally.”
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