anna
The story of
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‘I had no more tears left’
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Anna grew up in a small town in Eastern Europe. Her father was an alcoholic and she was sexually abused by her brother. ‘At home I soon adopted the role of the parent. I wanted us to get on well with one another as a family and not to argue.’ When she was nineteen, Anna got a job behind the bar in a discotheque. In order to earn more, she later began to work in a ‘massage salon’. In practice, the ‘massage’ was actually a concealed form of prostitution. After that, it was no longer such a huge step to make from ‘massage salon’ to striptease tent. Her wage there wasn’t bad, but her boss said: ‘If you still want to earn money with your body, you would be better off going to the Netherlands.’ Anna decided to follow this advice. One of her boss’s friends arranged a ‘window’ in the Netherlands. ‘During those first few months, I worked purely for the money. My emotional life was locked away. I was working fourteen-hour days.’ In the Netherlands, she came into contact with a guy who had a trendy appearance. He offered to protect Anna and to arrange her financial affairs. Anna likes the sound of that. ‘It was a guy who had a lot of money. I thought: I might be able to earn something from him.’ As Anna met him more often, her feelings for him intensified. She found him attractive, friendly and engaging, but it soon became apparent that she was dealing with a loverboy. The guy put Anna under more and more pressure and hit her. ‘Customers would ask me why I had a black eye and a swollen face. “By boyfriend did it”, is how I would respond. I didn’t feel like hiding the truth.’ The abuse became worse and worse and Anna decided to report it to the police. Her loverboy was arrested and was sent to prison
for five months. The police offered Anna a place in a home for victims of human trafficking. However, Anna didn’t want that; she was worried that she would no longer be able to support herself financially, which is why she continued working as a prostitute. One day she came into contact with a group of women who gave her a card containing contact details for Scharlaken Koord (Scarlet Cord). The women told her about the possibility of leaving prostitution, which gave her a little hope. ‘Not long later, I looked at myself in the mirror that hung in the room in which I worked. I said: Anna, a day will come when you look in this mirror for the last time and start a new life.’ In the meantime, she was hardly able to bear the work any longer. She felt desperate: ‘I was barely able to cry. There were hardly any tears left.’ At a point in time when she felt completely desperate, a man came into her room with whom she became friends. He said: ‘Anna, tomorrow pack your things and stop doing this work. I know that a relationship between us has no future, but I want to help you anyway.’ The next day she went to her place of work to collect her things. She looked in the mirror for the last time. The man from whom she hired the workplace said: ‘Are you sure that you want to stop? What are you going to do? As a foreigner, it is very difficult to get unemployment benefits or a job.’ Anna began to have
doubts, but she decided to continue to leave anyway. She hastily gathered her things together and walked away without looking back. ‘I felt so drained, I simply couldn’t stay.’ The man who had promised to help gave her money so that she could continue to pay her expenses. She also contacted Scharlaken Koord. Staff from Scharlaken Koord helped Anna to tackle her legal and practical problems. She took a course to become a fitness trainer and obtained her diploma. She also had many conversations about dealing with her past. She is noticing that her internal wounds are slowly healing, but at the same time she is aware that there will always be a scar. A scar like this may still ‘tear’ at certain times. Anna is happy to have made these steps which have caused her life to change and draws strength from her faith. ‘For me, God’s love is a reality.’
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