Trafficking victim: how I was tricked and enslaved by my uncle

(Vatican Radio) Sophie from Kenya works for an NGO promoting greater awareness of human trafficking and shared with us her horrific story of how at the age of 13 she was tricked and enslaved by her own uncle. Now aged 21, Sophie was among those participating at an international conference in Nigeria against human trafficking that was organized by Caritas Internationalis and the Pontifical Council of Pastoral Care for Migrants and Itinerant People. She spoke to Susy Hodges.

Listen to the interview with Sophie, a former victim of human trafficking:  

Sophie said her ordeal began when at the age of 13, her parents gave money to her uncle so she could be taken by him to a boarding school located in a rural area outside the capital, Nairobi.  Instead, unknown to her parents, the uncle never took her to school, spent the money on his own family and kept her locked up at his house.  She was forced to work as a minder for his children.  Sophie told us how her uncle’s wife would beat her physically and how a male relative living in the house sexually abused her. Her horrific ordeal lasted nearly a year until one day she was allowed to go out on an errand to the centre of Nairobi and there by chance met a friend of her mother who passed on the news to her parents. She was then rescued by her mother and taken back home.

Asked about how this terrible experience had affected her, Sophie said throughout her captivity she was “very angry at everybody: her uncle, her parents and everybody else. She said what made it worst was that the trafficker was not “a total stranger” but instead “a close relative” who had betrayed her parents’ trust in him. She described how during that period her parents were "really struggling" with poverty and it was an effort for them to even put food on the table to feed their children.

As a result of her ordeal, Sophie spoke of how she still finds it "difficult to trust people" and initially after her escape, she said the horrific experience “really broke me.”  Another consequence, she added, was that it completely changed the way she looked at life and it’s the reason why eight years later she wishes “to fight against injustice” and specifically reach out and warn other women and girls about the dangers of human trafficking.