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

by Sophie Hayes

  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.

  I used a false name and the press were asked not to take photographs of me. But it was still all extremely nerve-racking, and on one occasion I nearly had a heart attack when I realised someone was following me down an otherwise deserted corridor at the hotel. I kept glancing over my shoulder and taking deep, slow breaths to stop myself breaking into a run, and I felt like a fool when he turned out to be a security guard – who was making sure no one (else) followed me!

  When the time came for me to hand the petition to Antonio Costa, Bex told me, ‘If you want to say something to him, do.’ So, as I gave him the document, I plucked up all my courage and whispered, ‘I’m doing this because it happened to me.’ He thanked me, passed the document to a man standing beside him and then, holding both my hands in his, looked directly into my eyes and said, ‘God bless you.’

  When something bad happens that really changes you, you stop knowing who you are. So being part of the delegation to that conference made a huge difference to the way I felt about myself. I’d had to overcome my worst fears on a nightly basis in Italy, but this time I was doing so for a good, positive reason, and the fact that I didn’t get it all wrong and mess it up made me think that maybe I wasn’t stupid and useless – as
Kas had made me think I was.

  The conference, with its talks and workshops, was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I gave a closed talk to a group of girls and although it was still daunting and I was very nervous, I began to have just a little bit more confidence in myself and my abilities. And then I was told that a 10-minute private meeting had been arranged for me with Antonio Costa. I sat waiting outside his room with someone from STOP THE TRAFFIK, feeling sick with nerves and with a thousand questions tumbling around in my head. What would he say to me? What would I talk about? Would he think I was stupid and regret having wasted his time?

  But I needn’t have been so anxious, because the meeting was amazing. It lasted for a whole hour, during which Antonio Costa asked me questions about what had happened to me and about what I thought the Italian police could have been done differently that might have made me tell them the truth. It’s a question to which I still don’t know the answer, other than perhaps that they shouldn’t treat girls who are working on the streets as though they’re worthless scumbags. People who’ve been trafficked are frightened – for themselves and for their families – and girls being forced to work as prostitutes are often ashamed of what they’re doing. So winning their trust – if it happens at all – will be a long, slow process.

  For me, apart from the fear I lived with all the time, it was Kas’s threat to harm my family that stopped me asking anyone for help. It kept playing over and over again in my head and every time I thought I couldn’t carry on any longer, I’d think about my little brothers and about how I wouldn’t want to go on living if anything happened to them, and I’d say nothing.

  It’s hard to imagine what it’s like to be totally under someone else’s control. I didn’t even think to question Kas’s authority over me and I believed him completely when he told me, ‘My word is law – you must do as I say.’ All I did think about was trying not to do anything to make him angry. It’s a habit I still find difficult to break and I’m forever telling people ‘I’m sorry’, particularly men, and I’m constantly on the look-out for any sign that might indicate they’re cross with me. It’s a terrible way to live, and I hate Kas – and perhaps my father, too – for making me like that.

  I met Antonio Costa again some while later, when he gave a talk at another conference I went to with STOP THE TRAFFIK. I’d recorded my story and it was played, with my voice disguised, at one of the conference meetings. I was sitting in the audience with my mother, but after a couple of minutes I couldn’t bear to listen to it and I had to leave the room. I think part of the reason I found it so distressing was that I didn’t want to be there when the recording finished and everyone said, ‘Hmm, okay, moving on …’ But when Mum came and found me afterwards, she told me there’d been total silence for almost two minutes when the recording ended, and then everyone had started to clap.

  ‘I was so proud of you,’ she said, and her eyes were full of tears.

  At that moment I saw Antonio Costa walking towards us. He must meet hundreds of people – at least – every month, so I didn’t expect him to recognise me, and I’d started to turn away when I felt a hand on my shoulder. He hugged me and then he hugged my mother and said he knew how proud she must be to have such a brave daughter. When he asked me, ‘How are your little brothers?’ I almost burst into tears at the thought that he’d remembered what I’d told him.

  He talked to us for a few minutes and then he hugged me again and said, ‘Take care of yourself. Be strong. Be brave.’ And I was proud to think that I’d had the opportunity to meet someone so impressive and caring, and so truly interested in the cause he was supporting.

  Bex told me recently that someone who works for STOP THE TRAFFIK in Bangladesh had been giving a talk to some schoolchildren there and had told them about a British girl who’d been trafficked. Apparently, they asked a million questions and were amazed and shocked to know that such things occur in Britain because they’d thought they only happened in places like Bangladesh.

  ‘The poor girl,’ I said, when Bex finished telling me the story. ‘Do you know who she was?’ And Bex put her arm around my shoulders, hugged me and laughed as she answered, ‘It’s you, silly! They were talking about you!’

  And that’s when I felt really proud. In fact, it was the most amazing feeling I’ve ever had, to know that, thousands of miles away in a world I can only imagine, my story might help to keep other girls safe.

  Chapter 14

  When I came home from Italy, a friend of mine called Jim had helped me to get a job at the company where he worked. It was only temporary, while I got back on my feet and started paying off my overdraft, and after a couple of months I moved on, to work for the company I still work for now.

  I’d been in the second job for about four months when Jim phoned me one day and said, ‘An email has just been forwarded from your Google account to your old work account here. I think you’d better take a look at it. I’ll send it on to you.’

  I knew who it was from before I read it. Jim had kept my work account open after I’d left his company so that he could check it from time to time in case there was anything that needed someone’s attention, but he closed it shortly after that first email from Kas.

  Kas had hacked into my old Google account and found my old work email address. So, when I didn’t answer any of the emails he’d sent to the Google account I rarely looked at, he’d sent a message to what he must have assumed was my current work address.

  After that first one, emails from him started coming in thick and fast, all of them saying pretty much the same thing – ‘You motherfucking police bitch. You have no idea how easy it would be for me to be there in just a few seconds. How dare you talk to the police?’ I immediately went into a state of panic. I knew Kas would have read all the emails I’d exchanged with Robin – and sent to an email address that was clearly related to the police – and that he would be raging. Luckily, however, nothing very specific was ever said in those emails, so although Kas would realise I’d been talking to someone, he wouldn’t know any of the details.

  I didn’t answer any of Kas’s emails, of course, and then he sent me one saying he would give me back my email account if I told him who I’d been speaking to and exactly what I’d been doing. So I phoned Robin.

  ‘Just continue to keep all the emails and don’t respond,’ Robin told me. But I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that Kas was watching me, and I was terrified at the thought that he was going to come after me, although Robin insisted he wouldn’t and tried to reassure me – ‘They’re just empty threats. Try not to worry.’

  A couple of days later, I was at work when I attempted to log on to my email account and found that the password had been changed, which meant that I no longer had access to any of the emails I was being sent by anyone. I was panicking when I phoned Robin again, and this time he said, ‘I’m sending someone to pick you up.’ Within minutes, two police officers arrived at my office and when I told my boss that an ex-boyfriend was threatening me, she said, ‘Do what you have to do. It’s fine, just go.’

  At the police station, I was told that Kas had been released from prison in Italy and my heart sank. ‘What he’s doing now is classed as harassment,’ one of the policemen said. ‘So we need to log it. Unfortunately though, there isn’t much we can do unless you agree to press charges. But if anything else happens, you must let us know immediately and we’ll send out a rapid response unit.’

  As I’d done so many times before, I tried again to imagine what would be involved in pressing charges against Kas. Could it be done here, or would I have to go Italy to do it? But, wherever it took place, how could I possibly stand up in a courtroom and give evidence against him? He’d kill me: he’d see it as the ultimate betrayal and he would never forgive me for it. Even if he was sent to prison, he’d be released one day, and then he’d come after me, which would mean that, for the rest of my life, it would never be over.

  I still sometimes think, He could be doing th
e same thing to some other girl at this very moment and it’s my fault because I didn’t do anything to stop him. But I know I just can’t take that step. If I close my eyes, I can feel being back in Italy, and the thought of it still fills me with fear. I know what Kas is capable of when he’s angry; but I know, too, that the anger I’ve seen is nothing compared to the way he’d be if I was responsible for his being sent to prison: he wouldn’t rest until he’d made me pay for what I’d done. So, however much I might want to stop him, giving evidence against him simply isn’t an option.

  Although I think Robin always knew I would never testify against Kas, and I think he understood why, he did talk to me about witness protection. But that would have meant having to change my name and my identity and go and live somewhere else, when what I was trying so desperately hard to do was find the identity I’d already lost. Kas changed so much of my life and so much of me that having to abandon Sophie Hayes altogether and become someone else would have made it feel as though he’d won.

  So I carried on. I couldn’t shut down the email account Kas had hacked into because I couldn’t get into it myself, but I never used it again. Having given Kas my credit card and PIN number when I left Italy, I had to open a new credit card account and when I gave the guy at customer services my new email address, I told him, at least twice, ‘It’s really important that you delete the old address and that you only send correspondence to the new address I’ve given you.’ His patience was clearly wearing a bit thin, but he assured me that he’d ‘got it’ and that it would all be fine – and then promptly sent a copy of the email containing my new credit card details to the old address as well as the new one. Within hours, Kas had sent an email to my new address saying, ‘You stupid bitch. Do you really think I want your money? Do you think I’m going to try to steal from you? I don’t need your money.’ And I had to start the whole process all over again.