Word count: 606
Completion time: 1 hour 9 minutes
Summary: The horrors of being forced into prostitution as a child.
At first, I felt uncomfortable writing this from a first-person point of view because I don’t like writing in the shoes of someone who’s experienced something awful that I never have...but it was difficult to imagine this in another POV.
Here is one real-life instance of a girl - Chong Kim - used as a sex slave that I learned a lot from. She was 19 at the time, but many are used from as young as 11-years-old.
Her story has been turned into a film called 'Eden', should anyone wish to find and watch it.
It was 2003; the slave trade had been abolished in 1833, so why, at that time, did I feel chained to my ancestors’ pain? A valid comparison. Never in my life did I think that something like that would happen, it was something that I’d heard about in other countries, not in England; something that I’d read about online with my hands to my mouth, praying to whatever entity there was that their pain would be soothed and their torturers tortured.
Some people indulged in careerism – advancing in their field at the expense of their own morals, usually for profit. That was a kids’ game compared to the people I met; men who stole pre-teens from the street, bathing impressionable girls with smooth talk in bars...that wasn’t something you recovered from easily. Ten years on, I still see my tormentors’ faces in my sleep.
Like a porter wheeling bags of luggage across a station, they casually grabbed me and stuffed me into a van on my way home from school. My mouth was gagged, hands and feet tied, and finally, my eyes were hidden with a musty-smelling cloth.
My initial thought was that it wasn’t real, that I’d be able to open my eyes and be at my front door, father yelling at me for being late home; my second thought was that it was a prank that some bullies from school were playing; and third, I thought that I was going to be killed on the spot.
Oh, If only that were the case.
After travelling for God knows how long, I was offloaded with unbound feet from the van and led somewhere that I still couldn’t see. After several steps, my sight was restored.
The room I stood in resembled an office space, not too large, with an old poster of Guinness framed in one corner opposite a picture of a pin-up girl.
The first person my eyes locked onto was a slim guy in a red cloth shirt, slightly matted blonde hair, and a cap that shadowed his eyes. “Hey, you got a good one! We don’t get many black girls this pretty. What do you think she’s worth?”
“She could make us £1,500 in a night, easily.” That was another guy, leaning on a table.
“Where am I?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
The guy that led me out was still holding onto my arm. “You’ll see, baby girl.”
Soon I learned that my only worth was my body.
I was forced onto the streets, constantly monitored, and made to sleep with up to forty guys a day. If I caused an affront, it would be greeted with a fist, a belt, or worse.
I always had a horrible view of prostitutes: sluts who sold their body for cash without any regard for their self-worth as long as they got paid. No-one stops to think that some people don’t get a choice – sell yourself or get tortured until you wish you were dead.There were two options: shut up and take it, or get beaten to the ground if I tried to protest.
Every day I wished that I could hear my dad’s angry voice whenever I came back after curfew.
Any time that I wished that he would leave me alone, I wished even harder that I could see his face again.
All of the instances that I was forced into a stranger’s car, I remembered my silly tantrums when dad would force me to do my chores.
With each night that passed, I wished that it would all be over by morning.
I didn’t get my wish for a long time.
