Beskrivelse: testWomen trafficked into the Czech Republic and their life stories – actual samples.

No matter which country you are in, the situation of women trafficked in other countries are very much similar to the stories below.

 

All stories of trafficked women are by courtesy of La Strada ČR, o.p.s. and Archdiocesan Caritas Prague – the Magdala Project.

 

Some of the names, details and geography were altered for the client’s safety.

 

Marja

 

Marja (19) comes from one of the bigger cities in Lithuania. After Lithuania joined the EU, in May 2004, she went to travel across Italy. After some two weeks, due to unexpected expenses, she ran out of money.

 

This is when her friend, also originally from Lithuania, offered her a well-paid job in Prague.

 

They travelled to the Czech Republic in another friend’s car. Since they were now both EU citizens, crossing the borders was smooth and easy.

 

 Late in the evening they reached a town, whose name Marja didn’t notice at the time.

 

They were both tired, and since Prague was still a long way ahead, they decided to stay overnight in the unknown town. They went to have dinner at the nearest pub.

In the morning Marja discovered that the doors to her room were locked and that her papers and mobile phone were missing from her handbag. At that very moment a stranger entered her room, a man, who told her in Russian that she owed a lot of money for the transport and accommodation. There was a customer already waiting for her downstairs. When Marja realised that she was expected to work as a prostitute, she pointedly refused. On that day she was, for the first time, brutally beaten and raped numerous times.

In the following weeks death threats to both her and her family in Lithuania, beatings, and food deprivation, for even the slightest misbehaviour, became part of Marja’s life. She can’t say for exactly how long this went on. After a few days she started following the orders of the nightclub owner. She even pretended to be happy. As she puts it, all that she felt inside was the desire to survive and to not be hit anymore.

One day, when the staff was out of the house, Marja managed to call her boyfriend at home in Lithuania. He contacted the local police immediately. Because she had eventually found out the name of the town and the club she was being held in, it took only a few hours for the police to rescue her. After she was set free, the police offered Marja the services of the La Strada non-profit organisation. At first, she didn’t want to share her experience with anyone. During her first session with the employees of the organisation Marja said that most of all she wished to go back home to Lithuania.

 

She was still afraid of the traffickers, who had threatened to kill somebody from her family. On the third day she decided to testify for the police. However, she didn’t want the procedure to delay her return home.

Marja doesn’t have any papers for herself. She complains she can’t sleep at night, she has these pains in her belly, she says. At night she keeps on wondering if she might be pregnant. She should have had her period two weeks ago. She is afraid she might be ill. At the same time, she is afraid to go and see the doctor. She is hoping that everything will be fine once she is back home.

 

But she also keeps thinking of what her parents will say about what has happened, how her boyfriend will perceive her now... She is afraid, even though both she and a La Strada employee have spoken to her parents on the phone. She believes she will be able to forget and erase it from her memory.

 

Nadja

 

Nadja ran to a park. She felt nothing except terrible exhaustion. This is where she met with her ex-schoolmate, Jelizaveta, who offered her a job abroad.

 

Nadja was told that if she took the job, once she returned, she would surely have enough money for her and her daughters to live anywhere they wanted in Ukraine. She didn’t see any other way.

 

For five years she had lived with her husband who abused her, raped her and beat her, quite often in front of their children.

 

Once she tried to move away with her daughters. She got herself a job. But her husband found her, beat her up and warned her that if she didn’t come back to him, she would lose her job. She went to the police, but they didn’t help her. At work she soon found out that they didn’t have a job for her anymore. So she returned home. The violence escalated, her husband took away her papers. Then she came home one day and found another woman there, the children were with their grandmother. Her husband threw her out. This is when she met with Jelizaveta in the park.

Jelizaveta was the only one who heard her story out. That same day Nadja called the grandmother, who promised to look after her daughters, and then she left for Kiev. All the papers were to be arranged there. Her flight ticket and passport were issued under a different name. Threatened with violence against her children, and due to the money she owed for the trip to Kiev and the new papers, she didn’t dare to protest.

At the Paris airport Najda was met by Oleg. He took her to a bar. When he gave her some new underwear and told her to put it on, Nadja objected. He beat her and raped her. This continued for a couple of days. Nadja wasn’t given any food, she was closely watched, and she raped by other men. Within a few days she stopped resisting. She can’t remember how long she was there. At first she tried to escape. She was exhausted and confused.

 

She was unable to ask for help in French and she was afraid of the police because, as Oleg emphasised on several occasions, she had false papers. She got caught trying to escape, was brutally beaten, and locked in a cellar without any food, in complete darkness and cold. “Do that again and we’ll kill you,” she remembers Oleg shouting at her, just before he locked the door to the cellar. “Nobody will miss you. Remember Natasha? A couple of days ago she disappeared.”

Her resistance broke. All she could try to do was avoid the violence and survive. After a few months she was told she was being moved to Germany. They put her in a car. She didn’t even try to escape. Late at night they arrived at a nightclub, were Nadja was given over to another man. He spoke a language that remotely resembled Russian. In the morning there was a police raid in the club. They took Nadja. She realised she was in the CzechRepublic.

At the police station, Nadja tried to describe everything in detail. When asked why she didn’t try to escape anymore, she wasn’t able to give any answer. She also couldn’t remember many details regarding her stay in Paris or her trip to the CzechRepublic. She didn’t recognise the men on the photos she was shown, she wasn’t able to identify anyone. All she knows is that she left Ukraine in autumn.

Nadja has been working with La Strada for four months now, she is taking intensive Czech courses and is looking for a job. She has also been cooperating with the police. She is still having some health problems and nightmares about what happened. She would like to get a divorce and bring her children to the Czech Republic.

   

Zuzana

 

Zuzana (33, Czech) has been living in the charity house for abused mothers since July 2002. She has had five children, but she has given up three of them for adoption because she wasn’t able to provide for them. She is still looking after her two other children. Her partner, a drug addict and alcoholic, forced her into prostitution and abused her both physically and psychologically.

For seven years she had been standing by the road giving away all the money she earned there to provide for her partner, his parents and sister and her child, but still they were often hungry.

 

Her partner and his parents spent her wages on gambling, drugs and alcohol.

 

Because Zuzana worked as a prostitute, her family broke off all relations with her. She tried to leave her partner a number of times, but he always threatened and blackmailed her into coming back. The social worker that Zuzana went to see managed to put her in touch with the charity house for abused mothers, and Zuzana was secretly moved to another part of the republic, together with her children.

Zuzana didn’t trust anyone at first. She refused to talk to anybody, was under-eating, and weepy. She felt anxious in the new environment, afraid that her abuser would find her and would kidnap or kill her daughter. She developed a sleep disorder, had nightmares, was afraid of men, took in limited amounts of food. At first, she refused to leave the premises of the house. Later she did so only with the assistants.

Zuzana learned how to cook and manage the household. She took up retraining classes for cooks. She got in touch with her original family, who, since she had stopped working as a prostitute, took her back. Currently she is still suffering from anxiety and nightmares, but she is slowly regaining hope for a better life for herself and her children.

 

Source: International Organization for Migration (IOM), www.rekni-to.cz

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