Antislavery Usable Past

Natasha

2017 (Narrative date)

There are an estimated 136,000 people living on conditions of modern slavery in the United Kingdom (Global Slavery Index 2018). According to the 2017 annual figures provided by the National Crime Agency, 5, 145 potential victims of modern slavery were referred through the National Referral Mechanism in 2017, of whom 2,454 were female, 2688 were male and 3 were transgender, with 41% of all referrals being children at the time of exploitation. People are subjected to slavery in the UK in the form of domestic servitude, labour exploitation, organ harvesting and sexual exploitation, with the largest number of potential victims originating from Albania, China, Vietnam and Nigeria. This data however does not consider the unknown numbers of victims that are not reported.

“Natasha” shares her story of being bought and sold from Romania to Italy and on to Germany and Belgium. Her final stop was Britain where she was put to work in a north London sauna. “Natasha” was finally freed from her nightmare in a police raid, a year after her abduction.

It’s like your dead…because you’re scared, because you’re a machine. You’re not human.

They smuggled me into England in the back of a lorry. I was put in a box in the back. The box was full of wheels. I could barely breathe. First week, when I came to London, I was very busy. I had maybe 50 or maybe 60 customers. Everybody wanted to try the new girl. They want extras. Extra means without condoms. It means anal sex…two men and one girl.

Sometimes you want to kill these men. If they tell you you’re a prostitute, you’re a bitch, you’re a dog, you know…This kills you.

The police came and took me to the police station. I didn’t have a passport. I didn’t have any documents. If they don’t let me stay here, I don’t know what I’m going to do. If I go back, I’m scared of what would happen to me.

Narrative as told to Documentary Makers for Real Stories. All credit given.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/slaves/

Original narrative can be found here

Country

Theme

Sexual exploitation

Tags

VOICES: Narratives by Survivors of Modern Slavery

This is the world's largest archive of modern slavery survivor narratives. Across more than a million words spoken or written by survivors of modern slavery, we can see why slavery persists in particular hotspots, analyse patterns in trafficking routes, identify vulnerabilities, understand more about the challenges survivors face in liberation, and discover new antislavery solutions. These narratives offer the chance to systematically design new antislavery strategies based on the experiences, ideas and solutions of enslaved people themselves.

The database is searchable by country, name, theme, and narrative date. Narratives can be viewed in list or map form. A short introduction provides context to each narrative. Narrative provenance appears after the main narrative text.

For ideas on how to use this database, please see our accompanying guide.

Project Lead: Zoe Trodd. Team Members: Andrea Nicholson, Lauren Eglen, Rosemary Pearce, Olivia Wright.

Project Funders: AHRC Antislavery Usable Past grant (2014-19), ESRC/AHRC PaCCS Modern Slavery: Meaning and Measurement grant (2016-19), and AHRC-GCRF Antislavery Knowledge Network grant (2017-2021).

For any queries about the collection please contact: [email protected]. If you wish to cite a particular narrative, please acknowledge the survivor’s name, the provenance of the narrative and cite: Voices Database, the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham.

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