Now I tell you about the real-life story of a victim of human trafficking that I’ve ever reported.
Fifteen year old Sri, from Indramayu, never gave up hope of escaping from the Jakarta nightclub where she was held prisoner and forced to work as a prostitute.
“When I was offered the job, all I was told was that I would be working in a bread factory, but it turned out that I was to be sold into prostitution,” Sri* tells me, speaking slowly, with control and conviction. When I first laid eyes on her, petite, reserved and accompanied by her aunt, I had my doubts about whether she would want to talk to me. However, to my surprise and delight, she seems to appreciate the opportunity to share her experiences and speaks candidly about what happened to her.
When she was just three years old, she tells me, her parents divorced. Soon afterwards, her mother migrated overseas to work while her father remarried. Sri was sent to live with her aunt who had just moved to Jakarta. Unfortunately, this aunt took advantage of Sri and her naivety. As soon as Sri turned 15, her aunt pulled her out of school to work in a “bread factory”, with the promise of mouthwatering wages.
Sri knew something was not right when on her first day she was told to put on makeup and wear pretty clothes. Her suspicions only rose when she arrived to find not a bread factory but a night club in Cemara Kulon. Nevertheless, she was surprised and naturally horrified when she found out that she was to become a prostitute.
“I was put into a dormitory that adjoined the night club,” Sri explains. “They said it was the dormitory for ‘hostesses’.” From that moment on she was effectively a prisoner. “The night club was surrounded by a high fence and guarded by security staff so you couldn’t just walk in or out,” she says.
Determined to get out
For the first few days, Sri says, she was kept locked in the dormitory. She tried to break her way out of the room but her attempts were futile, and she was beaten repeatedly as punishment.
One of the other ‘hostesses’ was a girl called Poppy who, like Sri, had been tricked into working at the night club. Poppy gave Sri some information that would later prove invaluable.
“She told me about way out through the basement – a kind of drain,” says Sri. “But she said it wasn’t worth trying because if you got caught, they’d just beat you up even worse”.
Poppy had surrendered to her fate, but Sri was different. She never lost her determination to escape. She also refused to work as a prostitute. “Whenever I was offered to guests, I would always refuse,” she explains. “I agreed to work in the nightclub as a waitress but I refused to sleep with any men. But Mami [the woman in charge of the hostesses] wouldn’t accept this and I was beaten again.”