Trafficked: The Terrifying True Story of a British Girl Forced into the Sex Trade

by Sophie Hayes

  ‘Allez, allez, allez!’ she shouted at me, pushing me on to my side and smashing the toe of her boot repeatedly into my ribs before bending down to spit several times in my face. It felt as though my body was going to explode, but then, through the pain of hazy, fading consciousness, I heard the screech of tyres and a man’s voice shouting in English, ‘Get in! Get in!’ My head was pounding and as I tried to stand up, I felt sick. But, somehow, I managed to scrabble to my feet and stumble towards the open door of the car, and then I felt hands reaching out and dragging me onto the passenger seat.

  As the car sped away down the road, I glanced in the wing mirror and could see Scary Sue running after it, waving her arms again and shouting words that, mercifully, I couldn’t hear.

  ‘Are you all right? Are you hurt?’ the driver of the car asked me. But I couldn’t clear my head enough to answer him.

  I was always covered in bruises because of what Kas did to me, but this time the pain was different. It felt as though burning hot liquid was flowing into every part of my body. Every single one of my muscles was throbbing and every inch of my skin was sore and tender, so that I could barely move. I lay my head back against the seat and moaned, and when the man reached across in front of me, I didn’t even have the energy to react. I didn’t know who he was or why he’d picked me up when he did, but I was completely defenceless; whatever happened to me now was beyond my control. He must have seen me flinch because as he opened the glove compartment and took out a pack of tissues and a small bottle, he said, ‘It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. Take this. Clean yourself up. It’ll sting on those cuts, I’m afraid. But I guess that’s nothing compared to what you’ve just been through.’ And that’s when I started to cry.

  ‘I’m scared,’ I whimpered. ‘She’s going to kill me.’

  ‘That does seem to be a possibility,’ the man said, wryly. ‘Clearly, you can’t go back there tonight. Come on, cheer up. You’re safe for now at least.’

  After a few minutes, he stopped the car and pulled in to the side of the road, turning off the engine while he helped me to clean myself up. Then he lit a cigarette, placed it carefully in my shaking hand and said, ‘You have to be careful. You’ve got to stay away from her. She’s mad and she’s not going to leave you alone now. Obviously she doesn’t like you, but most of all she doesn’t like the fact that you’re here. None of the girls wants you here. You don’t look right. You don’t fit in.’

  He spoke such good English that I hadn’t previously noticed the slight French accent I could hear now, and I wondered how he’d known I was English and whether his arrival on the scene just in time to prevent Scary Sue from killing me was chance, or if he was someone Kas had asked to watch out for me while he was away. Either way, it didn’t really matter. I was just extremely glad he’d arrived when he did.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, hooking a strand of hair behind my ear and patting my knee. ‘You need to eat. We’ll get some food.’

  And, surprisingly, he was right – food was exactly what I needed, and I sat opposite him at a table in a pizza restaurant near the harbour eating as though I’d never seen food before, while he sipped a glass of wine and watched me. Then he paid for my meal and dropped me off on a road not far away from my usual spot.

  I’d earned almost nothing that night and I knew I had to go back to work, but it didn’t take me long to realise it was hopeless. I was in so much agony I couldn’t even turn my head. So I crept back to the hotel and lay in a warm bath, thinking, This is the worst day of all the worst days of my life. If she sees me again, I’m dead. I’ve got to stay out of her way.

  I was expecting her to come after me again the next night, and I was surprised when I didn’t see her, or the following night either. There was a group of transsexuals who worked on a road at right-angles to mine and who, when I asked them, said they were happy for me to work nearby. But, a couple of hours later, two Albanian girls came running at me, shouting, ‘No, no, go away, go away,’ and I had to move on.

  I was constantly on the alert, watching and listening. I’d get customers to drop me off on another road and then I’d walk back to my spot along an indirect route, scanning every side street I passed and jumping at every shadow.

  On the third night after Scary Sue had attacked me, I was picked up at about 2 o’clock in the morning by a man who drove a short distance along the promenade and parked in a small cove next to the sea. He seemed awkward and ill at ease, but as most of my customers were strange in one way or another, I didn’t really take much notice. What was odd, though, was that he didn’t want to have sex, and he even appeared to be reluctant for me to do it by hand. I just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible, so although I heard the sound of footsteps approaching the car, it didn’t really register because I’d already switched off my thoughts and let my mind go blank.

  I always told customers to lock the car doors when we stopped – although I couldn’t remember afterwards whether I’d actually said it that time. But suddenly the door beside me flew open and what felt like a dozen hands reached in, pinching and pulling at my body and dragging me out of the car by my hair.

  As I hit the ground, I looked up and saw the two Albanian girls who’d been spoiling for a fight the previous night. They began to kick me viciously and as I tried to curl into a ball to protect my face and stomach, I shouted in French to the guy in the car, ‘Help me! Please. They’re going to kill me.’ But he didn’t move, and when I glanced up at him, he looked steadily back at me, shrugged and said, ‘Non, je suis desolé. [No, I’m sorry.]’ And I knew that the moment I’d been dreading had come.

  Luckily, though – I don’t know if it was because she felt sorry for me or because she realised they might actually kill me – one of them suddenly stopped kicking me and pulled her friend off. ‘Go. Just go,’ she told me, and I managed to stand up and stumble back towards the main road, too shocked even to cry.

  I found out later what I’d already strongly suspected – that the attack had been masterminded by Scary Sue. She’d wanted to send me a message, and I got it, loud and clear, although I still didn’t understand why my presence bothered her so much; I’d never had any trouble like that in Italy. But I wasn’t in any position to argue. In future, I’d have to be extra vigilant, although, ultimately, there was little I could do if she was determined to make it impossible for me to work in the area.

  The French guy who spoke almost perfect English and had saved me from Scary Sue’s first attack came back several times while Kas was away. He just seemed to appear out of nowhere when I was in trouble, and I began to wonder who he was. I hoped he was someone Kas had asked to keep an eye on me, although he might just have been lonely and/or enjoyed playing the hero, or maybe he was an undercover cop. Whoever he was, I knew I couldn’t trust him, both because he might have been trying to take me over to work for him, and because Kas had taught me well and I wouldn’t have risked trusting anyone.

  He arrived just as I got back to my spot after the Albanian girls had attacked me. I don’t really know what made me think I’d be able to work again that night. My whole body was sore and there was an agonising pain in my stomach, which made me wince as I lifted my foot off the ground to get into his car.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘You look terrible.’ And when I told him what had happened, he sighed and said, ‘Listen, she doesn’t want you here. Word has spread and everyone knows about you now, so they’ll all be on the look-out for you. You’ll have to find somewhere else. I told you, you don’t look right. You don’t fit.’

  ‘But I don’t know what you mean,’ I wailed. ‘I may not look like Scary Sue or the transsexuals, but I’m no different from most of the other girls.’ And it was a thought that made me suddenly sad.

  ‘But you are,’ he said. ‘For one thing, you don’t dress right and your hair isn’t right. But look, don’t worry. I can help you. Just give me your phone number.’

  ‘No!’ I was instantly wary, although fortu
nately he didn’t seem to be offended by the way I’d spoken.

  ‘Okay, well let’s meet somewhere tomorrow and I’ll take you to buy some new clothes and get a haircut,’ he said.

  Maybe my clothes were out of place there and maybe what he was suggesting would have made a difference, but I refused his offer. I doubted any of the people I encountered had purely good intentions towards me and I knew that, even if he did and I accepted his help, Kas would kill me when he came back. So I was relieved when, instead of pushing me, the man shrugged and said, ‘I’ve asked around to see if there’s any way of helping you. There’s an area a bit further down the road that’s run by Lithuanians. It’s actually a woman who’s in charge and I asked her if you could go and work there, but she won’t have you either.’

  Why? I thought. Why are you getting involved in my business? What difference does it make to you? Who are you?

  Having someone there who was offering me help I couldn’t accept was almost worse than having no one at all. I hugged my arms against my chest, bending forward slightly to try to ease the pain in my stomach, and felt completely alone and exhausted. I’d been beaten up and harassed because I was being forced to fight for my ‘right’ to do something I didn’t even want to do, and I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be Sophie. When I’d told the man that I was just like all the other girls, I’d believed it – and it was true, because I’d had to become Jenna in order to stand any chance at all of being able to survive.

  There was another man who came a few times and was kind to me too. He was about my age and good-looking and he asked me questions about myself. But although I think he was genuine, every time I told him something I’d start to panic, because I was frightened in case I’d said too much. One night, he came late, when I’d already made quite a lot of money, so we just sat in his car, chatting, and it was really nice to have someone to talk to about normal, everyday things. Then he asked me if I was working on my own.

  ‘People think you are,’ he said. ‘You must be careful. You must make sure they know you’ve got someone to protect you. This is a violent place – you won’t survive on your own.’

  I was surprised at how disappointed I felt at the thought that he, too, might have an ulterior motive for being nice to me and that perhaps he just wanted to find out who was controlling me. But at least he was nice, whereas most of the men who picked me up were horrible.

  One night, a car drove past me with three or four people in it, and then a little while later the driver came back on his own. His driving was erratic and there was something odd about him, although I couldn’t work out what it was. He was friendly enough, but tense, and I wondered if he was high on drugs. I felt uncomfortable sitting beside him because it seemed as though there was something bubbling away beneath the surface – anger, maybe – and that it might burst out at any moment.

  He chatted to me in French and asked me questions as he drove, and I tried to sound friendly when I answered them. And then I just happened to glance down and see the screwdriver he was holding in his hand. I knew I mustn’t say anything or show my fear, although I was unable to block out the thought that he was going to kill me.

  Panic was flooding through me, but although I tried to stay calm and answer his questions in a normal voice, he must have sensed something, because he suddenly turned his head to look at me and asked, ‘What? What’s wrong?’ I pointed to the screwdriver and he laughed as he said, ‘Ah, no. It’s okay,’ and put it down on the ledge underneath the dashboard.

  Perhaps he had been thinking about attacking me, or perhaps he’d been afraid that I might try to rob him. Or maybe holding the screwdriver in his hand had had no purpose at all and had simply been the random act of someone whose mind was disturbed. Whatever the reason, although I was lucky on that occasion, it was just another reminder – had I needed one – that I was always only one step away from real danger and completely at the mercy of the strangers and oddballs who picked me up.

  Another customer refused to go to the place I told him to go to. Trying not to sound afraid, I demanded he stop the car and let me out. But he just ignored me and kept driving, and after 15 minutes we were some distance out of town. I didn’t know where I was or how to get back to the main road, and I was struggling to at least appear calm. I’d told him ‘50 Euros’ before I’d got into the car and when he finally stopped, in a garage full of shuttered parking spaces, and I told him he must give it to me first, he kept insisting ‘Après [Afterwards],’ and tried to rip the clothes off my body. I began to scream and kick out at him, banging with my fists on everything in sight, until eventually he gave up and, to my surprise, took me back to where he’d picked me up.

  When I think about it now, I realise how odd it must seem to other people that I didn’t try to escape while Kas was away, and the reasons are difficult to explain. I think that the way people like Kas control people like me involves a sort of brainwashing. When he said that he’d take my brothers if I didn’t do what he told me to do, and that wherever I tried to hide, he’d find me, I believed him. Just as I believed him when he said I shouldn’t trust anyone because he had friends everywhere, including among the police, and that even if I did escape, I wouldn’t be able to take care of myself because I was too stupid.

  Kas was away for about a week, and by the time he came back I was completely shattered. Having to rely on my own instincts and reactions because there was no one there to back me up when things went wrong had been exhausting. So I suppose, in some small way, I was glad when he came back, although I was dreading having to tell him what had been happening and explain why I hadn’t made as much money as he’d expected me to.

  ‘I tried to work after I’d been beaten up,’ I told him. ‘But my whole body was so bruised I could barely move, so I had to come back to the hotel.’

  As he hit me across the head, he shouted at me, ‘Why are you lying to me, woman? Are you so stupid that you think I believe these lies?’

  I fell backwards against the bed, trying not to cry, because I knew the sight of my tears would only enrage him further. As I pushed up the sleeve of my top and held out my arm for him to see, I said, ‘I’m not lying, I promise. Look at me. My entire body is covered in bruises. Why would I lie to you?’

  He bent down, twisted his fingers in my hair and pulled me to my feet, hissing into my face, ‘Don’t ever forget that I have people watching you. You will never know who they are or where they are.’ Then he began to fire questions at me: Where were you at this time? What were you doing between this hour and that one? And I felt faint with fear. What should I tell him I was doing when I was eating pizza in a restaurant with the man who’d rescued me from Scary Sue?

  I rarely dared to lie to Kas, but I knew I couldn’t tell him the truth. So I told him I’d managed to escape and had gone back to the hotel to clean myself up, but that I’d been too bruised and sore to go out again. My whole body was shaking as I told the lie, and for a moment I wondered if he could actually read my thoughts, or if perhaps he already knew the truth because someone he knew had seen me in the restaurant that night. By some miracle, however, I got away with it, although he still shouted at me for ‘getting into a fight’ with Scary Sue in the first place and for risking drawing attention to him. He told me I was stupid, that he couldn’t ever trust me and that one day, he knew, I would get him into trouble.

  ‘Now I have to fight with people because of you,’ he shouted angrily. ‘I have to sort out the mess you’ve created because of your incompetence and because you can’t look after yourself for even a couple of days. This is your fault.’

  Later that evening, he shrugged as he told me, ‘Just keep doing what you’ve been doing – getting picked up in one place and dropped off in another. And try not to let her see you.’ It wasn’t the solution to the problem I’d been hoping for, but at least I wouldn’t be entirely on my own anymore.

  I remained constantly alert and on the look-out for Scary Sue and then, one night, a car drove v
ery slowly past me and I could see her in the passenger seat, making throat-cutting motions with her hand. For one dread-filled moment I thought the car was going to stop, and perhaps it might have done if another car hadn’t pulled up beside me at that moment. I jumped into it, almost shouting at the bewildered driver ‘Go, go, go!’, and he sped away. I saw her again several times that night, and I knew that, eventually, I’d make a mistake and then I’d turn around and she’d be there.

  Two nights later, a man came to me on foot, wanting me to go with him to a hotel. Although the request in itself wasn’t unusual, no one had ever picked me up without a car before, and I was immediately wary. I felt uncomfortable just standing talking to him, but there seemed to be no concrete reason to turn him down – and I knew Kas expected me to make up at least some of the money I’d lost while he was away. So I told the man it would cost 200 Euros, and he didn’t even pause to consider the amount before saying, ‘Okay, we’ll go to the cash machine.’

  I walked along the road behind him feeling increasingly uneasy, and then he turned his head to say something to me over his shoulder and I realised he was Russian.

  ‘No Russians. Never go with Russians. They’re trouble,’ Kas was forever telling me. My heart started to race and I dropped back a few steps. And as soon as he stepped up to the cash machine, I turned and began to run. I could hear him shouting after me, ‘Come back! Wait!’ But I just kept running and running until I reached the hotel.

  My head was pounding and I didn’t seem able to catch my breath as I tried to tell Kas what had happened. But he held up his hand to cut short my explanation and barked at me, ‘You’ve already caused me enough trouble here. We’re going back to Italy tomorrow.’

  Looking back on it now, I don’t think it was a decision Kas had made because of the trouble he said I’d caused; I think it was what he’d always intended to do. But, whatever the reason, it probably saved my life. I’d been in France for 14 days – although it had seemed at least twice as long – and I was even more relieved to be going back to Italy than I’d been when we left there, because I don’t think I’d have managed to survive for much longer. I was dodging too many bullets and I knew that, eventually, one of them was going to hit me.