One day, I wanted to go downtown… while I was waiting for my friends at the bus stop, this guy shows up and starts asking me – “What’s your name?”, “How old are you?”… “Do you live near here?”, “Do you study?”, “Do you work?”, “What do you do?”
He says “Well, I’ll just to be your friend.” And he tell me about his life story and I tell him about mine… Our stories basically matched… He came from an abusive family, his father didn’t love him… He told me he was a salesman and that he travelled a lot. So I said to myself… this is a good thing. And when we met again. He asked me if I wanted to live with him, he told me he’d fallen in love with me.
That’s what gets you. Because you’re usually alone in life and when someone comes along and says “I love you” or “You’re very pretty,” you feel like they’re giving you the moon and the stars.
But the thing about him was that he used to put ideas in my mind, subtly.
“What if you started working?”
And I’d always ask “Doing what?”
“Providing sexual services.”
So the next day he explains to me the different services provided… and where I would go.
He sends me to meet a girl. I’d never thought we would got to a “hotel”… those “hotels”.
The girl tried to convince the hotel owner to let me work. She didn’t let me work. First of all, because I was a minor. And because I didn’t have an ID. He told me to go get some color photos taken. And by the next day, I already got my ID. I was already eighteen, when I was thirteen.
If I didn’t make the money, he’d hit me and hit me. That was all he’d do. At certain places the clients preferred younger women, girls. Because they looked fresher. They were like a fantasy to them. “Since I can’t rape one, I can go to a hotel to find one.” And there we were.
And I’d ask myself “Why are you still here? Why don’t you leave?” I heard lots of stories of girls who tried to escape and they’d end up dead.
That kind of life… goes by very slowly, as if it were a movie. It sounds like a movie, but it’s not. What we went through is real life. What we went through… it’s not nice at all.
As told to documentary makers at MTV Exit.
