Hello friends,
We are working hard to rescue two Survivors and bring them to Romania sometime in the next two weeks. I wanted to share their stories with you. Alina’s story illustrates the trickery that traffickers use on innocent women, but it also shows just how resourceful Survivors are. Alina is awaiting our call in Western Europe. The Sanctuary is the ideal place for Alina to enter when she returns to Romania, but first we need to fund it. You can unlock the transformation of women like Alina.
-Kim
As told by our partner on the ground in Romania, Beni Lup:
She was studying to be a nurse. Alina* was still in school when she met a man from the city who treated her like royalty. He found her an apartment to rent, helped her with transportation, even gave her money for shopping trips. He proposed to her after a year. Two months later, they got married and she graduated as a certified nurse.
After they married, he asked to take her family name. It seemed strange to Alina, but she consented. Soon, she noticed that he was often called to court. Her husband chalked it up to his name change, saying it required a lot of paperwork to make his new name official. She felt suspicious, but brushed her doubts aside. After finding out she was pregnant, she forgot about these concerns. Instead, she turned her attention to picking out a name for their baby boy.
Six months later, Alina’s husband announced that he’d purchased a larger apartment for their family in Western Europe. He’d secured a job as the manager of his friend’s hotel in a major city. In the midst of these preparations, he’d even found a job for her, a nursing position at a well-respected hospital. Alina’s parents agreed to care for the baby until they made enough money to pay for the apartment. Alina was ecstatic. Everything was falling into place perfectly.
After their son was born, Alina and her husband left for their new home. Her husband’s friend picked them up from the airport. When her husband started conversing with this friend in the local language, she was shocked. She had no idea her husband spoke anything other than Romanian.
Quickly, the friend dropped Alina and her husband off at the hospital where Alina was to work. The hospital was just as her husband had described: large, sparkling, beautiful. She entered a room to have some standard blood tests run, confirming her health before she could work as a nurse there. But things were not as they appeared...
The next thing she knew, she awoke in a house in the middle of dense forest, surrounded by a fence. Her husband was gone. She has not heard from him since. Instead, a lady and man towered over her. They told her she was going to work in a nightclub.
For the next year and three months, her captors carted her to and from a nightclub in the heart of the city. Twenty other women lived with Alina, all of them “rented out” to nightclubs each night.
One day, another woman in captivity writhed in agony. Alina told her traffickers she was a nurse. “I can take care of her as long as I have medicine,” she implored. An ambulance arrived, whisking Alina, the male trafficker, and the other woman to the hospital. The trafficker told her not to speak to anyone. Alina nodded.
At the emergency room, someone stopped the trafficker at the entrance. Alina saw her chance! She snuck through the door and followed the medical team. Walking through the hospital, she spotted a police officer working with another patient. She made a beeline toward him.
“I want to report a case of human trafficking,” she said, her voice firm. The police officer took her to the station.
Later, she told the officers there, “You have police officers all over the place, but none of them look into our eyes. People being trafficked cannot speak, but we can tell you with our eyes that we are trapped and tortured. Please, look into our eyes. Stop looking at our legs and breasts! Look at our eyes; that is where you can see our pain and desperation."
Alina is safe now -- she’s staying with one of our partners in Western Europe. We want to bring her home. We need your support to reunite her with her family in Romania, to start her journey of healing from this nightmare.
You hold the key to freedom for Survivors like Alina. They have strength, resilience, and courage necessary to survive! We merely provide a place for them to reclaim their lives. The Sanctuary is that place. Let’s get it open as soon as possible.
*name changed to protect Survivor identity.
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