By Mirjana Akovic | SOS hotline consultant
One night, while our client, young mother of a 5 year old child, was putting her daughter to sleep, someone throw a large stone on her window, that flown right next to her child. She looked through the dark and saw faces of trafficker and his collaborator, from whom she escaped few days ago. They found her family house and decided to take revenge and scare her in order for her to return to work for him. They broke the door of her house, went straight in, yelling at her and threatening to kill her whole family. Luckily, they just wanted to scare her that time so they left threatening that they will return.
Terrified for their lives, she run to local police station, but police officer who spoke to her did not recognize seriousness of the situation, he made fun of her, telling that she has to find help somewhere else, because such thing as human trafficking does not happen in their town.
She tried to find help on the other place, so she looked on the Internet. Luckily, she found ASTRA Hotline number and called us saying: "Please do something! I have no one else except you".
ASTRA consultants contacted relevant institutions in order to protect and assist this young woman.
Soon after, they went all together to the police once again, but this time to the chief of the police to file a complaint. He reacted fast because he realized that the police made a mistake the first time. They started investigation and our client received necessary protection for her and her family.
After that, still under impression of everything that happened she told us:
“I have to admit something... I was so desperate, in one point I was thinking to return to him or to kill myself just to save my innocent daughter. She doesn’t have to suffer... But you saved me! Thank you, thank you. You are not aware of what you have done for me. Now, I finally gained some strength to keep on going and to fight against trafficker. I couldn’t have done that without you. You saved me, I will never forget that”.
People, who are not familiar with the issue of human trafficking, are often prone to bias and stereotypes, which brings even more harm to trafficking victims. After victims leave the trafficking chain they are often discriminated by very same persons that are supposed to help them and protect them which expose them to secondary victimization and makes their recovery even harder. Because of that, it is important that they have someone who will be there for them and who will give them support when they need it the most, listening them with open mind, without judging them, but understanding the difficulty of the situation victims of human trafficking can be.
Links:
By Jovana Krotic | SOS hotline coordinator
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