Bought and Sold. Megan Stephens
criminals, most of them aren’t stupid, and it isn’t purely by chance that they choose victims who are likely to be compliant – and very frightened – in response to physical violence and psychological bullying. If reading Megan’s story makes a few more people understand that, she will have done a great service to other victims and survivors of trafficking.
It wasn’t very long ago that no one talked openly about child or domestic abuse. Then a few extraordinarily brave people told their stories and, gradually, we started to gain a better understanding of the true extent of these crimes and of the devastating effects they have on their victims. Now, we need to do the same thing in relation to human trafficking. By raising awareness of an appalling crime that can affect anyone, male or female, of any age, nationality, intellectual ability or social background, Megan’s book may actually save lives.
At the Sophie Hayes Foundation, we’ve recently set up a Survivors’ Network to enable young women like Megan to meet other women who’ve had similar experiences and who share their sense of isolation, guilt and loneliness. For some of our ‘survivors’, it’s the first time they’ve been able to talk openly about their experiences to people they can trust. I’ve been touched and very impressed to witness the support they give each other; it’s a privilege to watch them evolve and grow into the people they were always meant to be. One of the women in the Survivors’ Network writes amazing poems, another is a talented artist, some have already been to college and others are about to start.
You don’t ever ‘get over’ the experience of being trafficked: you never forget the physical assaults or the fear or the terrible, all-enveloping feeling of being alone. But, like Megan, you can refuse to be crushed by it or to allow your life to be defined by the horrific things that have happened to you.
When you have read Megan’s story, you may still believe that you would never allow yourself to be coerced, intimidated and frightened into becoming a victim of human trafficking. But I hope that you will have some understanding of the reasons why many millions of people do become victims of it.
* Sophie Hayes is the author of Trafficked, the Sunday Times number one bestselling memoir of 2012. After the publication of her book, Sophie set up the Sophie Hayes Foundation (www.sophiehayesfoundation.org), a charity that works tirelessly to raise awareness of human trafficking and provide support for its victims. In October 2014 she was awarded the Courage in Justice Award from the Crown Prosecution Association for the demonstration of bravery, inspiration and resilience in the face of adversity.
Every day for six years of my life I was afraid. It was during those years, when I was learning to live with fear, that I realised you never really know how you’ll react in any situation that’s beyond your normal experience. You might think you know what you would do, but you don’t. In fact, there are a lot of things I probably wouldn’t ever have known – about myself and about what other people are capable of – if I hadn’t gone to Greece with my mum when I was 14 and fallen in love.
Looking back on it now, it’s difficult to know whether what I felt for Jak was real love: all your emotions are intense when you’re 14. But I certainly thought I loved him, and that he loved me. It’s the only possible explanation of why – long past the point at which caring about him had become illogical and ridiculous – I missed what might have been my chance to escape. I don’t have any feelings for him now, of course, and I’ve finally accepted the fact that he didn’t ever love me.
I hope that when you’ve read my story, you’ll understand why I won’t ever identify the man I’ve called Jak, why I’ve changed the names of everyone in it and why I’m so afraid of the fear coming back.
My lack of courage makes me feel very guilty, not least because I know that there are other girls who’ve been forced into prostitution by the same human traffickers who tricked and controlled me. I don’t have to try to imagine how miserable and frightened those girls are. I know how they feel as they fall asleep every night wishing the morning won’t come so that they won’t have to live through another day of violence, humiliation and aching loneliness. I felt that way myself almost every day for six years. Now, five years later, I still have nightmares, and I still sometimes forget how not to be afraid.
What happened to me in Greece stripped away the last remnants of my self-esteem. And when you think you’re worthless, it’s difficult to believe that anyone could love you. But I know my mum loves me and before I tell my story I just want to say that I love her too.
Perhaps things would have turned out differently if Mum had insisted on intervening more forcefully when I made my first really bad decision in Greece. The problem was that she didn’t have any more idea than I did that there are actually people in the world who buy and sell human beings. So she believed me when I told her I was happy. She put the photographs I sent her up on the wall in the bar where she works, and she didn’t suspect for a single moment that I was lying to her.
There are lots of incidents in my story that will make you wonder how anyone could be as stupid as I was. It’s something I still don’t really understand myself, except that I was very young and naïve when I fell in love with Jak. Perhaps that was at least part of the reason why I suspended what little commonsense I had and simply accepted everything he told me. And if I didn’t realise what was happening, I certainly can’t blame my mum for not realising it either.
Something else I didn’t know until recently is that there are estimated to be more than 20 million victims of forced labour – including victims of human trafficking for labour and sexual exploitation – throughout the world. That means that there are more than 20 million men, women and children whose lives have been stolen, who’ve been separated from their families and friends, and who are being forced to work incredibly long hours, often in appalling conditions. A significant number of those people will have been tricked, as I was, by someone they believed loved them or by the promise of legitimate work. I wouldn’t for one moment blame any of them for what’s happened to them. So I know I shouldn’t blame myself, entirely, for what happened to me, although I still find it difficult not to.
I realise that by telling my story I’m exposing myself to the judgement of other people, some of whom won’t be as understanding as I might hope. But if reading it makes just one person think twice before trusting someone they shouldn’t trust, and as a consequence they don’t take a step they’ll regret for the rest of their lives, I’ll feel that something positive has come out of it all.
I was 14 when I went to Greece with my mum. At first, that seemed to be the obvious place to start my story. But when I really began to think about it, I realised it started much earlier than that, when I was just a little girl. Revisiting my childhood has helped me to understand why I later acted and reacted in some of the ways I did.
I was almost 12 years old when I began to develop from ‘child with problems’ into ‘problem child’. Even at that young age, I already had a tightly coiled ball of anger inside me that sometimes erupted into bad behaviour. I wasn’t ever violent; I was just argumentative and determined to do whatever daft, ill-advised thing I had set my mind on. Although I’ve always loved them both fiercely, I used to argue endlessly with my sister, and I would backchat my mum too, in the loudly defiant way some teenagers do. Then, at almost 12, I started wagging school and running away from home.
I feel sorry for Mum when I think about it now. It must have all been rather a shock for her, particularly as I had been quite a well-behaved, academically able little girl before then. I know she found it really difficult to deal with the new me, at a time when she had enough problems of her own.
I was four when my mum and dad split up. My earliest bad memory is of the day Dad left. I was sitting