The following survivor testimonies illuminate the personal plights of countless victims of human trafficking and torture.
Testimonies are complied from a variety of media sources.
Child maid trafficking in the United States
Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home. She was forced to sleep in the garage and work for 20 hours per day with no days off for over 3 years before she was finally rescued. Read her story here.
Young Canadian girl from the foster care system and into the sex trade
Eve was 12 when she ran away from foster care and ended up in an escort agency. She moved from agency to agency to multiple pimps until she met the man who pleaded guilty in May 2008 to trafficking her. Read more
Nicholas Kristof: If this isn't slavery, what is?
Long Pross was 13 and hadn't even had her first period when a young woman kidnapped her and sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh. The brothel owner beat Pross and tortured her with electric current until finally the girl acquiesced. She was kept locked deep inside the brothel, her hands tied behind her back at all times except when with customers. Read more of her story here.
UN hears account of torture in Tibet from former prisoner
Phuntsog Nyidron Sanaschiga, who spent 15 years of her precious life behind bars in Tibet, bears testimony to the suffering of the Tibetan people and repression under the Chinese government. Read more.
An offer too good to be true in the Middle East (UNODC)
Irina was a 16 year-old high school student from the Southern Russian Federation when she accepted a family friend’s proposal to take a trip to the Middle East to waitress at a local café. Upon arrival at her destination Irina was forced into prostitution and threatened with violence if she tried to escape. Read more
Kenyan sex trafficking survivor discusses her ordeal in Germany
Lucy Kabanya, 39, was in high spirits at the Moi International Airport in Mombasa. And she had every reason to be, for she had just boarded a Condor Airline plane on her way to Germany, courtesy of her German “boyfriend”. Various thoughts flashed through her mind as the plane cut through the clouds on its way to Frankfurt, where she was to spend a three-month holiday. But all hopes of an exciting and wonderful stay in a foreign land were shattered on arrival in Germany, when her host confiscated her travel documents and denied her food for several days before informing her that she would work as a sex slave. Read more
Young Vietnamese girl forced to work in a plastics factory in Taiwan
From a distance, it is hard to imagine that the same young girl who loves to sing along to Phi Nhung songs, chatters away about her lifelong dreams of opening up an orphanage for homeless children in Vietnam, and gets excited about eating pizza is the same young woman who has endured a type of pain and suffering most of us will never encounter in all of our lives. Read more
Born into slavery in Mali
The idea of a salary is something Iddar is just getting used to, having dramatically escaped from his life in the hamlet of Intakabarte, outside Gao, Mali in February this year. According to Iddar, his grandmother was bought as a slave by the Tuareg Ag Baye family, and from then on she was listed as taxable property on the Ag Baye's religious tax form. Read more
The Daewoosa Case in American Samoa
In 2001, over 200 Vietnamese and Chinese workers were tricked into paying thousands of dollars each to travel to and work in a sewing factory on the island of American Samoa, in exchange for free food and housing and monthly wages. However, once the workers arrived into American Samoa they were beaten, confined to the factory, barely fed and forced to live in filthy conditions while the employer kept their travel documents. This special report tells the story of 12 women who escaped the factory and their brave rescuers. Read more