Articles

Alma's Story

Alma, from Albania

My name is Alma and I’m 25 years old, I come from Albania.

I got a guy before that said to me, “Is that your dream to be a prostitute” and I just say, “You bastard, do you think it’s a dream? My dream to be a prostitute?”  I tried to explain to them what is going on. They say, “Oh, I feel sorry for you” and then they think, “Can I have sex now?”  They don’t understand what’s going on.

When I arrived here it was not the dream I’d been expecting, it was a very bad dream for me. It was just me you know, eight men, so it was very scary. I was scared.

He knows me from before, you know. He knows my family. He knows where I lived. He said, “If you don’t do this, you go away from me, I am going to kill your family – I am going to kill your son”.   So, I have to accept what I am doing because I was very scared. I don’t want nothing to happen to my family – to my son.

It’s very rare you can escape from the pimps, very difficult you know. You can’t. Lots of girls have been dead from that.  You can’t.  The days you just have to keep going, to work, you don’t have a choice, you can’t get away from them. You just want to kill yourself. You can’t go on-and-on like this. This is your life.

When a group of young lads come inside I used to feel… sad actually because they look like they're my brother’s age. They’ve got a big attitude to them, you can fight with them or they can beat you up you now because sometimes you refuse them – ‘I don’t want to do anything with you”. They respond, “I pay you so I can do anything I can do anything with you”. They think they’re buying you.

Sometimes I think he’s not just hurting me, he’s hurting other people like me. They think they aren’t hurting no-one, but he’s hurting someone.

I still feel bad you know, but now I’m trying to change it, but still when I look at myself in the mirror – at me.

I’m never going to forget. You can’t forget it.

All bad things happen, affect all your life.

That’s what they did to me.