Life Uncut - Kidnapped Twice: Lurata Lyon’s Story of Surviving Human Trafficking

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

There is so much conversation at the moment about the Epstein files and the trafficking of young women and girls. But while all the conversations seem to be around  who was involved, who knew what and how this went uncovered for so long, the actual stories of survivors and their incredible strength can be lost. So today we are speaking to a trafficking survivor.Lurata Lyon's life story is one of unimaginable hardship and extraordinary resilience. As a child in war-torn Yugoslavia, Lurata endured the horrors of war, being separated from her family, and being taken by human traffickers - not once, but twice. After surviving the first trafficking and returning home, Lurata was kidnapped by Serbia's illegitimate army. She was tortured, abused and held in captivity for 6 months.  Through her harrowing experiences of torment, abuse, and near-death, Lurata not only survived but found the strength to share her story with the world with the mission of stopping this happening to other children and young women.We speak about: Why traditional media aren’t talking about human trafficking Lurata’s story of how she kidnapped and brought to a human trafficking boss The one thing she said that changed their plans for her How she escaped their horrific abuse How Lurata was taken a second time How she survived living in a ‘box’ that felt like a coffin How her father saved her Lurata’s life afterwards; how she found refuge in the UK and found love  Why Lurata shares her story and how common trafficking is You can find Lurata’s book here  You can follow Lurata here  You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Hosted by Britt Hockley & Laura Byrne Produced by Keeshia Pettit Video Produced by Vanessa Beckford & Lachy Pugsley Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany and I'm Laura and for the last little while if you guys have been following along I have been very deep in the Epstein files. I can't stop thinking about it and the conversations that are coming off the back of that about the trafficking of women and young girls. But I do worry that sometimes these conversations seem to be stuck around the people involved. How did it go so long without knowing who's having the conversations, who's behind the emails, who was behind it all? And I think we get lost a little bit on the people at the core of this matter that really do matter and they are the victim survivors themselves. And that is why today we are going to be speaking to

a trafficking survivor. Loretta Leon's story is one that we have known about ourselves and talked about for quite a long time. And we have wanted to speak to Loretta for probably the last 12 months and just haven't been able to make it work. But when Loretta was only 17, she was from war-torn Yugoslavia. She was not only enduring the horrors of those wars, she was separated from her family and she fell into the hands of human traffickers, not once but twice. And the story that unfolds off the back of that is one of pure horror but also pure strength and resilience. Loretta was not only told she was going to be trafficked,

she was told she was going to be killed and her organs would be harvested. I simply cannot imagine that that is what is happening in the world, but the fact of the matter is it is still happening And we're going to unpack this story today with Lourada. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for having me on and being so patient from my side. I had so many obstacles and yeah, timing is everything. Not at all, Lourada.

Also, when you say we had so many obstacles, we've been trying to get the connections working today because obviously we're doing this from across other sides of the world, but we are so grateful for you taking the time to talk to us and also revisiting a story, which I know for you, you've written a book about this. you have spoken about it many times but it can't possibly be an easy story to continuously revisit even though it is and has been such a huge part of your life honestly it never gets easy but it is an absolute mission for me to speak out I used to be so embarrassed to talk of what had happened to me and I'm sure if any victims of any sexual assault or you know in these lines would hear

me now and say exactly how I feel and that's why they end up not saying anything they are scared and they just feel grateful to survive and and then they live in torment but once I found the healing process and I realized that by holding such information and not speaking out somebody has to speak out and if you don't you know I hope somebody that would want to speak out has healed and is strong enough to handle it because it is is a lot of pressure and also I'm very sensitive towards the what's happening in the world and continues to happen and the victims and the people that i meet but yeah the obligation is massive that i it weighs on my shoulders and i i actually carry it with great pride and i know what my mission is in this planet earth i think we all

have a mission like yourselves have got stories to share for instance and to make a difference to give my story and other people's stories a space safe space to talk and be heard because most channels don't actually cover it especially in europe they seem to be shying away specifically speaking britain unless there is some independent for example channels and so on media channels but podcast has been godsend it's whoever invented it and created it has given people a free speech a space where they can be free to speak about things that it matters in society in politics but also it matters for them to inspire others to heal and to seek forgiveness and to see how else they can you know use those lessons into blessings and and move on with life because life is moving

on anyway we can choose to be miserable or we can choose to do something about it. Loretta in terms of your story I would love to get a sense of what was happening in your life what was life like before the war had started, your relationship with your family, before everything changed, like what was happening in your life at that time? I grew up really poor. And I do mention this in the book. Actually, we were very poor. I had two very academic parents. My dad was a doctor and my mom, professor of languages. I was the only child. My mother couldn't have children. So when I finally was born they thought I was a the greatest gift and perhaps it is so moving forward I suppose with what I'm trying to do I just remember being so happy and content my family specifically my

mom and dad they were always human rights activists and they never took size they just wanted everyone to have equal rights whether they were Albanian speaking or Serbian speaking or whether they were orthodox christian or muslims or we had catholics to them it was always like why does it matter so much why does the religion and the ethnicities have to matter so much can't we just live in peace and have equal rights and have schools on both languages and just crack on with life that was their mentality and i actually grew up admiring them both and my mom was really lucky because you know they were so alike and my dad always had my mom's back when he came to human rights activists as such and then vice versa but life itself was poor but rich in love and

with so much respect I grew up with two adults in the house so I think I grew up before time I didn't really fully have a childhood because I actually much admired talking to my parents or their their colleagues about the metals of the worlds and medical worlds or languages and travel I was always fascinated with travel and space and time and all of this but I did do play loads of football actually I'm quite good at it on the streets with my male cousins and I was not one to knit or anything like that that was quite of a I love dresses I was a princess but a tomboyish kind of intense yeah so um I do miss it you know it gives me I think that time before everything gets taken away from you it's sort of the two extreme cases I think that time and then what

happens next are just so vivid in my mind the whole time because after that it's all been sort of a blur and just me trying to make sense of how could go from one extreme to the other so quickly And so talk to us about what happened with you and your family when the war did break out. Yes, so my parents were living in a small village where majority, if not all, were Muslims. Because the war has started in the north and the history is just so vast, but in actually Australia you've got lots of ex-Yugoslav people that you have accepted as your own and thank you for that, for giving them a chance as well, like Britain gave for me. Yeah, I'm really proud of my people.

i think yugoslavian people are just so hard working and and they go for it but war it was all dictated by politics it wasn't really the civilians never wanted war from either side they just wanted to live like they've always lived and worked and did business and you know like tito's kind of time it's like people wouldn't even remember tito but some old generations would it was our leader it was he was incredible and so when the whole thing started in bosnia the war and the croatia and they wanted different states they wanted to have their own independence they didn't want to be ruled by serbia as the leader of the whole other states and to be told what to do and how to to go about with their lives and and so many

different cases there which i've written it all in the book it's really complicated but the war started with Serbia and Croatia sorry Serbia and Croatia had a war Slovenia walked away from it super quickly they got their independence with no bloodshed it's like it's how it should be done and with a lot of diplomacy and respect you just let people have their own state if that's what they want and then Croatia had war with Serbia and to this day at times they really don't like each other still then bosnia got it really badly because in bosnia there is loads of muslim communities and so it was all down to religion so although they speak the same language in this case it was down to religion and it all started when the soldiers

they went from to join the serbian army to serve in the army like a national service they would go to to do that and then never come back the Albanian speaking Muslims and so either they would come back or not come back and just say they've died and what have you but there was one case that will always stay with me in my mind it was when the mother received the funeral and was told to bury the son straight away and not to open the casket and now she was a Muslim mother and she said but I want to wash the body and I want to proper have a proper burial and this was again i keep saying this it was on the news and they refused to let her do that but then after they buried the man the boy the mother called the family and said i want to dig him out and i want

to give him a proper burial now the army has gone let's do this then they opened this grave up within like 24 hours of being buried they realized that the body before he decomposed they noticed they it had this like a t-shape cut which was stitched up so basically they gathered information that it was human traffic sorry organ harvesting going on at that time so they were killing the young soldiers taking the organs like the hearts and so on this is what first came on the news and i thought that was just crazy i mean who would do that you know this is something horrific monstrous and then amongst all of that serbia decided to close all the schools that were albanian speaking in kosovo and demanded that all the schools to be in only one language which

was serbian now in in the serbian side where there is albanians they speak both languages simultaneously perfectly well and we learn it at school like myself i speak serbian fluent and i speak Albanian fluent but then in Kosovo they only spoke their strongest was Albanian and they didn't really practice it was no need for them because they were further away from Serbia so to go from not having their schools on the language to actually having the schools all in Serbian it was a big shock to the system and then of course them they had a lot of wealth in Kosovo and they wanted the independence of Serbia wouldn't give it to them so they started this horrific war which was huge massacres happening around Kosovo and that was really embarrassing

being on the other side as Serbian nationals watching this it was just like we couldn't believe what happened in Bosnia then we couldn't believe what was happening on our doorstep and so we lived very near to the border with Kosovo like literally a mountain divided us separated us a huge mountain and our village was as i mentioned before majority muslims and so when nato started entering kosovo to stop this crazy war serbia turned up the heat to the next thing that they could which was in serbia the villages around us were albanian speaking muslims but also Serbian speaking, but they're Muslims. And now what they did in Bosnia, they wanted to do with our village,

which was one of the biggest villages in actual, the whole Serbia and the whole area, the whole former Yugoslavia. And that's when it got really, really, for us, that's when we knew we were in big trouble. We knew he was coming, but we just thought we're going to just maybe, you know, pushed around or anything like that. But we got marched into this mountain, which was nearby. And the whole entire village was marched into the mountains.

The elderly, the children, the cries that night, the cold, the fear of what's going to happen next. We all knew it was death, but nobody would speak and we weren't allowed to speak. Eventually, when we reached this little area of the mountain where it was open, we were surrounded by soldiers all around and it was almost like really dark. they were getting ready to shoot us all and just leave us there for dead all at once to make a statement to NATO that you can take Kosovo you can protect Kosovo but this is our land and Kosovo will eventually be our land kind of like a message very primitive and you know in God's will at that time my uncle bless him he was so wealthy he was a farmer just an incredible human being decided to

negotiate the whole entire village's life for money and bribe the soldiers to save the village and I simply just witnessed this in in silence because I was really young I was 17 and it was really scary place to be for anyone not just for me and I just watched him and witnessed how he negotiated my mom went with my uncle and to go and get this gold that they were hiding on the ground my uncle was hiding he had gold he had cash because on those days they didn't trust the banks so I hate to say it but my uncle used to say I don't trust the banks it was a communist country yeah and so with my mom he went and they dug all this like wealth and gave it to the soldiers so in a nutshell they saved the town and forever to be remembered as a hero of the

village that he saved I mean people talk about him like a saint he saved the whole place but unfortunately after being saved the torment started where the sexual abuse towards women and young children specifically women started and my father petrified of what he might have to witness came home and he said Loretta I need you to pack and through this mountain you have to just go march cross the border illegally he said you'll just follow your heart you'll know what to do he said you need to find the Red Cross go to Kosovo it's safe United Nations are there I said but dad I don't want to do this on my own and I really don't want to do this I much rather you know I wanted to stay with them he said you have no choice just go you speak both languages speak

to the locals find a way he said I can't see you raped or anything like that and I said mom could you come with me she said no i need to stay with your dad because she felt that obligation she needed to be with him and i respected that so i ended up through the mountain i said goodbye to my parents not knowing where i was going which way i was going i just sort of followed through this cold mountain on foot i actually cannot fathom as a 17 year old girl that has to head out on foot and cross a border by herself not knowing where you're going but knowing that you're trying to escape a war and the and the possibility of rape how scary that must have been and so you've crossed the border by yourself what happens when you get to the other side

took me a long while uh you know it wasn't like a walk in the park i must admit i got lost a few times and disorientated when i got to the other side i waved down this bus because it's the only thing I saw moving and luckily the bus stopped and they were a bit puzzled why was I there and what was that where was I going I mean young girl they they noticed straight away I didn't say much I said I just need to get to the capital of Kosovo which was is Pristina and they said this bus doesn't go there but we're going to the next town and from there you can get the bus at the bus stop I was like okay and they gave me free lift and got to the bus stop to the next city and from there into pristina eventually by nightfall i got there and i it was it's a curfew hours where

when there is war there is conflict they put these restrictions you cannot just walk around after certain times so you're only allowed for certain time in the day they have set hours and i did i i didn't even know what was going on to be honest i just walked through and luckily i didn't get shot because i think a lot of people did get shot when there was uh police hours and i made it to this what i could hear noise out of this building only because i was desperately thirsty and i thought if there is clearly there is noise there is life so i can maybe they can guide me where the red cross is and as i opened the door to this day i will always remember when I opened the door wide open every single person in that room was wearing different we call it

helmets but I don't know what they called it like this little hat that they put the UN police and I've got from my my friends Peter and Brian sort of to the side blue they had greens from Germany had greens the United Nations you know had different color I don't know what it's called it's a hat they also had their their flags on on their arm and at the front and it really sort of took my breath away because I went from running away from soldiers to literally full room with soldiers or police officers but I braved it enough I went to the bar and I had I asked for some water I was thirsty and then I just lagged it out and sat outside of this bar just collapsed I thought Oh my God, where am I going to go now?

There is no way these people will help me. And I got really lucky that evening because there was two American police officers, Peter and Brian, which are mentioned in my book. And they witnessed that I was sort of lost and a youngster. And they instantly had this feeling that they needed to speak to me. Of course, I didn't speak any word in English, although I was fluent in Serbian and Albanian. but no word in English maybe I could say I love you because I've heard it in songs but you know nothing that I could communicate my feelings or my my distress and they came out with a translator

and the translator said they're asking what are you doing on the streets where is your home and I said to the guy I'm actually from Serbia and I'm just on the streets because I'm looking for the Red Cross and I didn't want to really explain too much. When I said I was from Serbia I could see the translators because he spoke Albanian the translators face changed towards me I sort of sensed this hatred towards me even though I spoke Albanian because I mentioned Serbia there was so much hate and rage and I was hoping he will translate it and he did and Peter and Brian spoke amongst each other and they decided to give me shelter in their own apartment because they thought me going to the red cross wasn't safe and they explained that to me much later like

much later so the red cross was corrupt at that time not the actual charity itself but the people running it as with everything that's coming out on the news now you can believe it a bit more the people that ran it in Kosovo were corrupt so not everyone but some so if they had young people come into the tents where they were holding the refugees or the shelters they used to take them and make them vanish because they had no adults with them nobody that would vouch that they were their kid or keep them safe and they just made them disappear into human trafficking for sex trafficking and then organ harvesting which is a huge business both of them the biggest businesses in the world are these two human trafficking and then it goes into sex trafficking

and organ harvesting it divides into two simultaneously both happens to these people that get kidnapped and i agreed to go with peter and brian because i had nowhere to go and you know i was really grateful to have a place to sleep so we became really good friends although i couldn't speak english i i still sort of to say thank you to them for giving me shelter I started cleaning and cooking any food they had in the fridge so they really appreciated some home-cooked meals and they were really surprised that a 17 year old you know could cook and they were really grateful and instantly they became very protective of me so they would never leave my side everywhere they went I had to go with them when they were at work I would not allow I was not

allowed to leave their apartment I had to stay indoors they never really explained to me why but equally because I didn't speak English I can understand if they told me through the translator I wouldn't even think the translator would tell me the truth what was happening because I think the very translator is the one that gave me into the human trafficking so it was huge corruption going on and actually the time with them I will always remember it will be one of those memories that will probably play in my head before I die just how much respect peter and brian showed me there were two americans it's a completely different nation and this is really important for listeners and what i'm trying to say with this message so we don't have to be

related or be sort of related at birth or related in any way shape or form religiously or believes anything like that human beings that are decent they are decent and they instantly will give you the respect that one deserves, like Peter and Brian did for me, and they risked their own positions to keep me safe. They couldn't save everyone, but when they had a chance to save that one person, they did their outmost, and I'm really grateful. In terms of when you had this period where you felt safe, you mentioned that the translator is the person that you think gave you up what happened then when you ended up being taken by these human traffickers what was it firstly that made you think it was the translator who was the person who orchestrated this but also

what happened and how did it change i actually never worked it out it was him for a very long time only you know thinking back on how everything the way he behaved and the things that was impossible for anyone to know I was with them because we never ever went anywhere public we only went to UN troops apartments for a quick gathering to eat so they kept me with them they didn't want to leave me at night on my own and if they ever had to travel they would leave and elderly stay with me or check on me and you know so they had all the systems in place and so when it changed for me was when this one day I've done all the chores around the house and honestly I was going a bit cuckoo because I was thinking I can't contact my mom I don't I didn't

even know if they're still alive if mom and dad are alive I was very connected with them they were my best friends all of a sudden I'm not in touch my entire life has been around them and I thought and I loved reading I always had this love for reading and exploring and knowing and I'm such a need to know kind of person so decided when we used to get out of the apartment I would always see this newsstands outside of the apartment not very far just sort of a few meters five ten meters away and I thought what's the worst it could happen you know but something little change and I buy this magazine and then or newspaper and I'll come home you know what's the worst it could happened because there was no electricity it was daylight but I I didn't know what to do so I

wanted to read and that's what happened I just I left the door open because I my intention was to come back and money on my hand and as I walk out of this building it was all on the ground floor where they had their apartment these squeaking wheels like they just sort of it came so suddenly I couldn't even make sense of it but my instant reaction was to tell them off to say you can't go on the pavement with a massive van you know it's like watch out kind of thing before I could even speak this is how quickly this happened I had this thing over my head I got grabbed by my armpit and I got shoved into this van on on the actual floor and they obviously speaking in Albanian they're saying oh we've got her we've got her and many vile different words they're referring to me

the spy the like I don't even want to mention these horrible words and I'm lying and I could smell the actual the base not the basement but the floor of this van it just smelled like like you know like a mechanics car and I'm thinking this is a nightmare this is a dream I have to wake up and then I started really hysterically shaking because I realized oh my god this is I don't know what this means and what's happening or we reached this building and I remember where the building is because when I left after the interrogation I saw everything they didn't even cover my eyes anymore but when we went in I didn't see anything I was just dragged from the van my feet just dragged the floor again under my armpits until I was on my knees and that thing came off

my head and the first person i see is this man just across the the room and it's looking at me and he just said oh she's the one and this also will stay with me because that's the first thing i heard from such panic to she's the one and it's like who am i would you mean the one and i was thinking in my head they got the wrong one clearly and he said okay boys i'll flip her on her back i would what i would i would like to watch this rape you know i want to watch this rape and uh obviously everything sort of it's fast but it's in your mind it slows down because you're analyzing what's just been said specifically for me is the case and when i when i was flipped on my back so hard and my clothes got ripped off i was crying and screaming because it was

horrifically kind of such a horrific action from their side and I just screamed as I watched the ceiling I said don't do this I'm a virgin but I don't know why I said that I mean to me it meant everything but I didn't say it because I wanted them to know I said it because I was so scared of understanding what this action meant when I've never been with a man before and how it might make me feel and how precious I felt towards what I held inside me and the innocence that I had and and the boss the guys wouldn't stop but the boss heard and he approached us and I could see him from below he had to grab this man off me he's like boys have you not heard we have stumbled across a huge cargo and a cargo a human i i

thought cargo meant chocolates and anything else like goods but commodity as a human i never thought it was possible and he said that we've got a lot of work to do with her so dress her up and let's go we have to take her to the apartment and that's when my grooming started he had a lover with him the whole time vile vile woman so in the human trafficking world there are women involved so don't ever be surprised this is not about men being bad or anything they're both genders are involved and my grooming period was very disgusting and very terrifying in many levels I had to watch many sexual scenes with his lover a gun being held to my head because I didn't want to watch it and I was feeling sick and I was sick I'm multiple times just vomiting because there's

things that I I was 17 this is not I'm not meant to see stuff like that and and then when it got really dark for me was when they started bringing girls to show me what you know what is expected it off me what's going to happen to me and it and being made to watch such monstrous acts with women completely unconscious and i couldn't do anything to help them and for me to watch them like that it was really tough and this always gets me this theme because um i said it to someone In an interview, I said, oh, maybe it was Mary, my friend. I said, you know, maybe if they never got me, maybe these girls wouldn't have been treated like that.

And I felt so much guilt and I always have been. And that's not your fault. I completely understand where you would be feeling that because you feel like it's a flow on effect, a cause and effect. If I wasn't there, then this wouldn't have happened and they wouldn't have brought in to show me. But it is never the victim's fault. Of course.

Ever. It is tough information to digest, that's all. Loretta, how long was this period? In terms of in time from when you were taken, this period that you're describing at the moment, was it days, was it weeks? This was weeks and I actually lost track of time. When I wrote the book, I had to speak to Brian

and reach out for information to see how long I was missing for. and you know I had to recall information because I you know under so much stress you lose track of time and then what happens next that also completely threw me from my time frame of where I was in the world or what was happening to me so with them I was for at least three to four weeks what was the plan like what was the thing that they were priming you for what was it that they had intention for you? They actually told me point blank. They said, we have sold you to the highest bidder. And every time, you know, they would perform these sexual scenes and I didn't want to watch. They were like, you need to watch because we have sold you to the highest bidder

and you need to please the first person. So you need to watch. And this kept playing in my head. You know, it petrifies you for the future in a way, because this expectation and things that I needed to be doing so I knew already I was sold to the highest bidder and in such a malicious way they would say oh and once he's done with you then we will put you into prostitution like the wider kind of prostitution and once that's done with you because obviously the girls they only as good as their youth to them they then because they can't release these victims into the into the world because they see too much they see this they see too much and so they kill them by taking their organs and they did this whole thing in Albania the organ harvesting it's a very well-known house

in Albania where that's where the organ harvesting was happening to this day it's a very protected house not anyone no reporters can reach it then you've been bought were you delivered to this one person that you were being groomed to go to well luckily on the night that they were on the actual day because we had to travel to the nearest border that goes from Kosovo to Albania I knew what was happening there was no way to escape there is nothing you could do when you have like so many grown-up men with guns just holding you on each side I was sitting at the back of this this car and the boss was at for in the front with the driver and I was in the middle and with two other guys on each side with guns like hidden guns and we were meant to cross the border that night but

when we reached this border point check border crossing it was the Italian police army and the police and the army because there was both of them they they patrolled this bit and they said the translator said it's shut for we it's closed i don't know what was going on he said you guys need to go back police is saying you cannot cross you just can't cross and they said but we need to do go you tell them we need to go we've got business we've got this and this the translator kept saying to the guys in the car you can't you need to turn around they will not let you cross and so to me this was like music to my ears because I knew that the moment I mean as we were approaching the border I was I was worried that once we made it through I knew it was the

end there's no way then anyone could help me on the other side but I knew as long as I was in Kosovo maybe there was a chance maybe just maybe with the United Nations being so heavily kind of on the ground and and then we turned we got turned around and they said we don't even try to for the next few days don't try to even cross it because it's shut for the moment and so the boss decided to go back because he had his own things I don't know I didn't question I was just listening passive listening to what was going on in the car he said I need to now make some meetings this that than the other and he was organizing to meet people along the way on the way back from that side of Kosovo into Pristina and every time we stopped whether it was a pizza place or another

restaurant he had a couple of meetings I just wanted to go to toilet and I thought if I go to toilet and I try to make a scene maybe somebody would help me from the staff on the spot but they were very very well known and they're very scary to look at let alone to to talk to them but I did go to the bathroom I requested to go to the bathroom which they never denied but the last two times I made such a scene I would go straight to the waitresses and then the guard would grab me and shove me around and say what are you doing you walk straight where are you going so they would be really like bullying me to the point that the staff realized that I wasn't there by will and something wasn't right and so by the time they finished these meetings along the way

and we've reached our apartment and this is so significant in my mind we walked into this apartment where they were holding me anyway in the central of pristina on the fourth floor and we are on a hallway little hallway and the boss just stopped he got this call on this little small phone he had and he's looking at me with this like really scary eyes and I'm just looking not knowing what's going to happen next and above him was a clock and I looked at the time and it was midnight and you could never sleep around these people you just never know what they go up to we were always three people in the same bed him his lover and I and he just went he said oh did she now okay well she's more you know trouble than she's worth it he said I'll deal with this

he put the phone down looked at me with disgust turn around to his youngest team and he said you rape her killer do what we do I'm out of here everybody get your stuff let's just move out of here now I went from thinking I'm tired and all analyzing like some crazy like ideas in my head how I would love to sleep to literally oh my god I'm about to die now and that was honestly I can't stress it enough it's impossible to understand the feeling unless you hear it and you think it's happening for real it's really so surreal that knowing that you're about to die any second and they left they closed the doors there was two doors always on the outside there was a metal door like a prison door and inside there was a wooden door and then uh the guy said

you heard let's do this i was like begging him on my knees please please don't do this let me pray i didn't know what else to ask him that i could do i was like let me pray and i honestly really just needed to pray i was so scared i thought if i'm dying i deserve my last wish as a prayer and he said okay fine you do your thing i'll do my thing i said because you're killing me anyway we let's just pray you know this is crazy what we're doing just it's like fine I went on to prayer mode straight away I didn't even wash myself or did anything I went into a Muslim prayer because we lived in a Muslim community head on my floor on the floor in front of me the tv onto my left and behind me was a sofa with a table which was glass and I'm praying and I'm

saying to myself if only I could make it alive or somehow for God to tell my mom and dad what had happened because the biggest fear for me was not dying as much as my parents not knowing what had happened to me yeah and so in this process of praying I heard I heard something which I didn't clock but I heard a click but didn't make anything of it but once I was praying something was telling me to turn around it's like a really really clear voice like turn around look turn around and I was like I can't turn around I'm praying you know silly and I turned around and I saw the gun and the keys on on the table I looked at it and I I was shaking I got the keys and it's only two keys so that's good in a way because I didn't have to go through loads of keys and I slowly creeped to

the doors and then I thought okay if I just open the door and run you know maybe this is my time to run I opened the first door no problem very quickly the second door I'm really I can't open the door and I thought it opens the same way as any door but in fact it opens the opposite direction so you have to go anti-clockwise not clockwise to open the door and it was just getting so fiddly and eventually it opened and I went flying with the door out the guy heard he then started screaming and shouting behind me and I was just going down like staircases running for my life literally I couldn't even touch the stairs I felt like I had wings I was flying down and I could hear his footsteps by the time I reached the exit door he he reached me and he punched me so

hard I went flying away into the actual road which was the main road but because it was after midnight it was hardly any cars and none at all at that point but because I was on the floor now and trying to get my orientation I spotted this car parking with a you know the back brake at the back just making this really bright red color yeah and I just started screaming and I didn't know who's gonna be it could have been one of them but I just decided to scream I mean it's an instinct and actually to my luck it was a Italian police officer that's been doing his duties and he's finished his shift and he was finishing for the night so he heard my scream he ran towards me the guy obviously had the gun on him so he was ready to shoot me and shoot the police officer

so the police officer then heard the gun that was shooting him and they decided to shoot each other and and I was just crawling towards the police officer because I just wanted to get as near to him as possible and then eventually I reached him and he reached me and he sort of dragged me behind his car opened the door reached in for the walkie-talkie because it was all connected to the car and within like a minute is too long seconds we had so many United Nations car that was still on duty that arrived from all over the world I mean I was so shocked when I saw everyone and obviously I got very hysterical at that moment I was like as if to say where have you been guys like can't you just check every car you know you need to check more checking you know I

was just hysterical screaming crying I couldn't calm down because I think I went from a shock of dying trying to escape and then all of a sudden I was sort of safe but frustration and anger and I don't know I just remember these so vivid uh these memories so and then yeah they took me to the to the police station I gave an interview one of the Kosovo police officers he said I want to hug you because he said what you've done tonight is very brave and you are the only survivor we've been trying to bring these guys down for so long they are on our list of human trafficking and organ harvesting we know very well who they are who they work with what they do they one of the biggest group but we can't bring them down because there is no survivors they eliminate survivors so if

there has been not just survivors but witnesses they eliminate witnesses and they eliminate all the victims so anyone that witnessed anything that is goes against them they get executed and so I said well okay then he said well you need to appear you know in court and then they will be sent to Hague and I looked at him and I said okay I want to go to Serbia now and they said well where are you going to go because it was 3 a.m in the morning oh I said I've got Peter and brian and gave them their full names uh they are in the book actually um they i got reunited with peter and brian oh that's amazing i've got a photo of them this is the only picture that just made gave me all the feels i know oh yeah they they are so proud of me and they always have been

and I really owe them so much. I've been meaning to reunite with Brian ever since and it's just never been. I'm scared sometimes that one of us will die and we'll never meet again. Oh, Loretta. Loretta, you said at the very beginning, before we even really started,

that for so long you were embarrassed to tell your story and you felt embarrassed to share what had happened to you. Where do you think that embarrassment came from? What happens next is the embarrassing bit for me, you know, of how I got, you know, abused daily when I was kept in a solitary confinement for six months by the Serbian soldiers, because I had to go back to Serbia. And I think the embarrassment came from the level of abuse I got shown. So I don't know if it's the embarrassment for them or was I feeling it for me? A lot of people will find it hard to believe the next part of your story, which is, I mean, the fact that you survived kidnapping and human trafficking once, but that it then happened to you again, and this time more horrifically, and you weren't so lucky so quickly. Can you talk to us about how you were taken a second time by these soldiers? Well, I had to go back. I mean, I said goodbye to Peter and Brian, and there was no place for me to be in Kosovo.

I didn't want to be there anymore so I was forced to go back by not by you know by choice but circumstances said goodbye to Peter and Brian never to see them again they just gave me they wrote down some information that I kept memorizing in my head eventually if ever I lost it I could reach them you know their badges and their numbers and the stations when I got back home it was wars on there was bombing and it was like a ghost town I went to my house and I couldn't find my mom and dad they were hiding in the basement and eventually I found them after I searched upstairs and my mom and dad were like oh no you shouldn't have come back and I'm like I have so much to tell you you know you don't know what's happened to me in Kosovo and the evil and this and that and my mom is like

no you don't understand what's going to happen here and I'm like I'll be fine mom I'll stay with few and obviously I I didn't know what had been going on in in the village and within minutes of arriving I didn't have time to speak to mom and dad properly we heard this massive army truck come into the garden so they came in and they came and took me from my mom and dad you were taken again the night that you got the same night you got back to your parents yeah so they came and they grab me again you know they're like let's go in Serbian and I was like my mom is crying and screaming and I'm like mom is fine honestly I said you don't understand I was so naive I said you don't understand what's happened to me so I'll just explain to them because in my mind I thought

okay this is the soldiers from Serbia and obviously I have crossed the border illegally there and back and so it's only normal that they would want to see who I was and what am I doing here I mean they were watching every move and I got in the truck but as I left seeing my mom and dad cry in the garden I honestly thought the thoughts that went through my head was like okay well look I'm gonna be interrogated and we ask questions I'll tell them and then you know in in terms of my mom and dad it's fine because my mom and dad now can see you know that I'm with the soldiers they don't have to wonder what's happened to me at least they know where i am or who i've got yes and again it wasn't long before we reached this building and didn't make anything of it very old very cold

very weird abandoned and i just thought it was maybe as an army kind of station or of some kind but when we walked in there was this a commander of theirs that was waiting there for me but what i also noticed which everyone knew this during the war in serbia kosovo there was two different things with the army going on so they had the real army which obviously proper trained army and they had uh boots and the uniform and then you had the recruits from prisons to make the numbers which were like um covered up faces balaclava is always that what it's called yeah balaclava that's right like the special forces to cover their faces and they wore trainers simple white trainers and that's not something done in the army you just don't you have to wear boots

but we noticed this when they took us to be massacred we kept noticing that it was sometimes it would be half half and in this case they all wore trainers and they interrogated me i told them what had happened like i've just told you but in much more details because took hours to explain this to them they wrote everything down pretending and they're like okay start again so many many times and beating me up and throwing me around and i would still say exactly the same what had happened and they said ah we don't believe her and at this point i couldn't really see properly because obviously my nose got broken from being beaten up i started you know bleeding through my mouth they slip this ear is actually it doesn't have any flexibility although

you can't see it now but it's been fixed in the UK because it was badly infected so I don't have much flexibility on the ear anyway these are like things that can heal that can be fixed but mental torment that they showed me it's the one that I had to deal for the rest of my life they said okay let's dial up the heat they flipped me up on my front and i didn't know what was about to happen but on my calf they they branded me with this metal uh they they brand the the kettles and and so on it's for to recognize whose kettles they are and so on it was like a hashtag shape yeah and i fainted obviously i don't remember it was really harsh pain and then i don't remember anything but what I did remember I what I noticed as soon as I woke up from that ordeal is that one

I couldn't see I couldn't get out of the place obviously my eyes were very swollen I was smelling of blood and rotten already and I started trying to get out of it where I was and I couldn't get out and I knew that I thought I was buried alive because it's how it felt it didn't have a window and then I panicked I screamed I became crazy and then I calmed down and I fell asleep again and I woke up and this would repeat a few times until I I accepted it what was happening and thinking that I was buried alive eventually as the time went on I started seeing the creases on the door underneath the door and on the edges that there was light from the outside and there was a door but very faint very not very sharp light just very barely you could make it out and I thought

okay but there is a door so okay I am somewhere and this is not I'm not buried alive which was a relief but still very claustrophobic it was very small room super small tiny it's like your sofa's put together maybe just a tiny bit more tiny tiny that's when I realized I was in big trouble and and to be honest at that point after this moment nothing ever mattered to me anymore I wanted to be dead the first rape was probably the the hardest bit for me in that time because you still have a hope until something is taken away from you yeah there's always hope and then when that was done the vile things they did to me on the the whole time but this remains with me forever it's um with this all the screaming i did and all the pain and they caused me and

and then it was just after that was done i was just disgusted and it was no worth me fighting for any longer because they were no different from the guys in Kosovo they were preparing me to sell me to the highest bidders and they did exactly what was going to happen to me anyway and so and I was being kept against my will for their sexual pleasures and torment psychologically the six months in this solitary confinement without ever leaving the building aside from them washing me and and the story is really horrific it's very detailed in the book let's just say this way now the way I see it is probably the biggest university I could have ever gone the biggest the biggest lesson I could have ever learned in in this lifetime it's incredible

that you share this story like it's incredible that you you know and revisiting that trauma revisiting what happened to you in order to share it to help other people do you know if at the time when this was happening to you if they were doing this to other women at the same time in the same place i didn't hear anything in the same place i i didn't i was always alone with loads of different soldiers multiple times a day and i never met anyone so lorada this was you think from memory about six months that you were with these soldiers did you know that there was going to be and I don't know how quite to word this but did you know there was going to be an end date did you think that you would ever leave that place because they were going to sell you to

somebody or did you think that when they were done raping you and abusing you physically and mentally for the six months that they were just going to kill you did they tell you that they are going to harvest your organs because you just said that in a way some of that physical torment was you know just as bad I mean sorry you said some of the mental torment was just as bad as a physical torment what did you think was going to happen at the end of that did you think you were ever going to get out no I didn't think there was a way out at all because when you spending like a week in a small room or even a day or 24 hours i think it can really get to you but spending i i mean i say six months now because i know the time but only because i was told i was gone for that

long but i lost track of time i didn't know what time of the day it was whether there was light sunny snow sun whatever you know i lost complete track of reality and just trying to go to your questions so I lost hope I lost hope because I started to starve myself because they were giving me I mean from get-go I wasn't eating anymore I was really devastated and also disappointed and just literally I wished I was dead so I stopped eating and I lost a lot of weight I lost all my body weight where I was staying where they were keeping me in this room that was my toilet as well in the same room so some you know they would take me to be washed yeah it was in the same room because I didn't have the freedom to go to the bathroom and although I wasn't eating I was still

losing weight and that that has to come out somehow your body digests things you know it's very strange and so because that was all everything for me it was vile in there it wasn't it was you don't keep animals like that and the room to describe the room i am five foot seven so if i stood up i could almost hit my head so it was a bit of space at the top and then about maybe a meter and a bit away from me to the other wall and when i lie down i can stretch my legs but you could almost touch the ends and so five foot seven so you can imagine that's why it felt like a grave because it was that small I still somehow was ticking along and I honestly didn't understand how I could be still ticking along

I was infected and I had so many things but because I didn't know what was happening because there was no instructions there was no there was simple just abuse in out nobody was coming in that to save me there was no me moving place or being in a car with them or anything like that it was simply in the dark room for this period of time of six months so no i gave in i completely gave in i turned into i i was hallucinating a lot and i was making my own stories in my head because you go a little bit cuckoo but what had happened in the meantime is my father bless him because he was such a respected doctor he decided to go to the police local police even though it was war and he said you all know me I serve you both I don't take sides whoever is injured I'm there

my daughter is missing they took for investigation because she crossed borders with Kosovo as a result of the massacre that never happened now she's missing could we find her and the police said well if it's the army that took her they she should have been back by now because the army doesn't interrogate because they're the ones patrolling the borders but they don't keep the people they they would just bring them to us because we then control the prisons yeah and so it didn't make sense and my dad said well i need your help so the the local police are serbian police which my dad knew decided to speak to the actual army and the actual army said we don't have her but we are not happy with what's happening and we cannot interfere and they knew I was being

mistreated they knew where I was but the army because they didn't want to go to war with each other if you see what I mean because they were prisoners they were rapists they were they were murderers these these are people that were given into power to be in the army for Serbia during the war but they knew they knew so that's how my dad found me and so they managed to find more information they confirmed the location and everything that's how my dad managed to then rescue me and the only way to rescue me is to come and bribe them for 24 hours at home because their borders were shut so nobody was leaving or going and so my dad came and bribed these, well, they were not really proper soldiers.

And he said, I just have her 24 hours at home, just need to see her condition. I'm a doctor, and then I'll bring her back. And he blamed it on my mom, you know, being near death kind of stuff. When I first saw my dad, when they came and collected me from the room into the interrogation room, I just remember when my dad saw me. I was a bit dreamy because I didn't understand what was happening. I was losing because I wasn't nourished enough I was skin and bones I looked at my dad I recognized

his face and his jaw just dropped he couldn't believe that I had changed my physiognomy has changed of course my psychological side of things as well but I was unrecognizable he grabbed me and he spoke to me in Albanian he said let's go and they didn't like it they say you can't speak like this because they don't speak albanian and i said what took you so long you know i i just i knew that it was a long time i didn't know how long he says we're not gonna talk now as we walked out he gave them money so he my dad gathered loads of money from the cousins and they kept it quiet they didn't know what the money was for but he took loads of money and to bribe me out when we walked out of this building it was bright sunshine and having been in darkness for so long

it blinded me I couldn't look at the light and I felt instant pain on my eyes so I had to cover myself get in the car and just stay hidden inside the car and I said dad is mom dead because she's not with you he said no no no she's very much alive and she's waiting for you and then we drove home my mum washed me and obviously she was shocked when she saw me I could barely walk she cleaned me washed me tried to feed me I couldn't really eat my stomach has shrunk so much I just wanted to sleep on her lap it's unfathomable and I know you even said it yourself but it's unfathomable that you survived that it's unfathomable that you were even alive to be able to tell what happened to you when your parents when you spent that time that 24 hours or your

father said it was going to be 24 hours how did he get you out for how did he save you how did you not end up going back into the situation well there was a truck waiting a massive truck when I say truck this is like you know like proper truck that do export import internationally and that still had to happen even during the war because they still needed goods and stuff people needed to survive so that wasn't stopped but there was a truck waiting for me at the end we lived in the fields and we walked through the field slowly there was a road there the super super slowly and obviously I couldn't walk had to say goodbye to my mom my dad said this is the last thing I ask you to do obviously I was refusing to because I wanted to just die next to my mom that was my

moment that I really wanted to die because I was so tired and there was I couldn't see how could anything ever change after that or how could it even get lighter or brighter I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel and I just wanted to be done obviously said goodbye to my mom thinking that I would never ever see her again and then my dad slowly walked me to this truck and when we reached this truck that was on the side of the main road just waiting in silent for us he has stopped there having a break and my dad just knocked on his window the guy was spanish guy and we couldn't communicate but i don't know how my dad did it i think he was the police officers again his friends that helped him organize this whole thing and i got put in the truck i got given

something written and my dad said you'll know when to use this when you get there I didn't even bother to check what it was I just left it in inside my body and that was it I looked at him as if it would be my last time I said goodbye and I thought oh my god I'm with another man that's my instant thought but the guy was really respectful we never spoke I don't speak I didn't speak Spanish and obviously no English I just kept quiet he smuggled me in his truck and then I don't know I had to be hidden the whole time so I don't know the way around the way he took me so yeah the truck took me into the UK. And then you get to the UK as still a 17 or 18 year old girl on your own what do you do then? Well the the letter that my dad gave me this

little thing had a number that the driver of the truck had to then call that number and then at this m25 in the uk now that i know it in a petrol station he stopped and there was a man waiting for us i was really frightened i didn't know who we're meeting or what and his face looked awfully familiar when i saw him and he was my mom's first cousin that escaped bosnia he was studying to be a psychiatrist he took the last flight that left Bosnia Sarajevo into London when the war and the massacres were happening in Sarajevo in Bosnia and so he had already gone there way before me like years before so the fact that he was already there and my parents knew that it was safe they just gave me that number to call my uncle so I call him uncle but he's my mom's

first cousin he picked me up spoke to me in our native languages he also speaks perfect Serbian and Albanian and he looked very familiar to my mom's family on his face her brothers and I thought oh this is familiar okay I sort of calmed down a little bit took me home bought some food and then he said I need to take you to the home office to report you as a political asylum seeker because you are so young and I told him what had happened he was completely fascinated when I say fascinated in not in a in a weird way he was just so puzzled that I went through that and I managed to still you know be a human being and talk to him and but obviously he can see I was not well ill skin and bones and he was concerned so as soon as he did take me to the home office they took it so

seriously within six months I got granted an indefinite leave to remain in the country so that guaranteed me that I would get my passport eventually and I would get my nationality as a British they checked all the facts they obviously liaised with the UN Peter and Brian and all that was happening they have their own ways i don't know how they governments you know they communicate with other countries and specifically since the united nations were on the grounds there everything was confirmed they realized the matters are really serious and they could not send me back because that was what was happening on those days they were sending back refugees yeah and then i was put into the system of um and i'm really grateful and i say this in every speech i do i'm

really grateful to the british government and the british nationals that pay their taxes to support survivors like myself or people in my position to give me a chance in life because without that funds of taxes for example part of the tax is going to supporting refugees like myself i got me education sorted medic medical system housing initially and then obviously i gave that up because I got a job and I wanted I didn't want to abuse the system and I was really grateful for the opportunity and then the rest is history ever since all I wanted to do is find a way be someone else in a way I never wanted to speak about what's happened to me publicly yes the government's new my doctors knew everyone else that was involved in my healing you but my best friends didn't know

and when I first started speaking out they're like Loretta we don't recognize you are you serious this happened to you I said but this is why I didn't tell you because I didn't want people to be my friend or seek I'm not an attention seeking person I don't want people pitying me or being my friend because I've been through something I want people to be authentic even in a relationship or anything like that you know I want people to be with me for me not because they feel sorry for me or they I don't know in my head I thought you know the further I stay away from what happened maybe I will forget it and then it was actually my mentor Gilles he said Loretta listen I told him the story for the first time an outsider outside of the medical team and

he said you need to write a book and you need to speak publicly I said I can't do that I'm just telling you because you know I want to share what I've learned from it and so on he said no no dear he said you need to do a book and you need to work with charities he said you do realize human trafficking is happening everywhere in the world it's not just war I said it can't be true Gilles we are in the safety zone he said nobody's safe did you get to see your parents again eventually I reunited with mom and dad yeah after many many years we lost touch and I didn't know they made but their story is their own my dad passed away last year unfortunately and I wanted him in a documentary and it just I never managed to do it on time

oh sorry did he come and live with you in the UK I got them here and I the government's here offered them to stay with me and be with me and after everything we've been through but my dad they were beaten up a lot you know they got abused a lot and he suffered two heart attacks so he felt like he was a burden for me he wouldn't have been of course not i'm sorry i mean it's an unimaginable horror that you've been through and it is unimaginable that there is women across the world who experience their own versions of what human trafficking looks like. And the fact that, you know, Britt, you said at the very start of this, with the discussions that are happening around Epstein at the moment, it all centres around who

these perpetrators are, but none of it centres around what are the actual stories that have happened to these girls. And this is the unimaginable truth. Loretta, you did go on to get married and you fell in love again and I can only imagine that would have been a real process or how hard that would have been to not only just start to trust people again but trust men and be physical with a man and have that kind of a connection. How did you reconcile that? What did you have to do in your life to get to the point where you realized you can and do deserve to be happy? Oh my god that's such a process and I don't think it's something to be rushed and this question comes up so much because the partner you are with you have to be 100% clear with them

and be honest and I was always honest from the start if they don't approach it because it's not you approaching it with care is them them approaching it with care in a sense that they are patient enough to go at your pace it doesn't mean the pace won't change it doesn't mean they will never be in control when they want to it just means to begin with you need to have a best friend and in a partner that you're gonna continue to trust with your body again in a more essential way than in an abusive way if you see what I mean so because I didn't know the difference I didn't even know what it would feel like sensuality what would that meant because it wasn't something pleasurable that I witnessed or I endured it was just torment and horror so when

when I met my husband then I told him the truth and we started dating and I didn't think he's going to get serious we're just dating he was patient there was nothing happening it was very old school we would just meet had dinners each the run go home and not kiss maybe and not hold of the hand it was like that for me it was baby steps and and it rightly so because although I had come at an age I was still a 17 year old kind of an non-experienced girl when it came to sensuality or romance it was just it the two don't compare what happened to me and how we should be and so he took baby steps with me but also before I told him my story he didn't know why he just thought I was hard you know hard to get I was playing hard to get where I actually had my

demons and then I kept waking up in the night and we were in bed together I wanted to trust somebody next to me without having any sexual kind of connection you know without any expectation I think what I'm trying to say and I think it's how I healed but then when we were asleep after being cuddly and all of that I would have my nightmares and he said I don't know if you realize this but first time it happened I didn't make anything of it I thought you just had a nightmare but this is regular um are you okay he said you must be exhausted you're talking in different languages you are screaming you are running you are and I didn't even know this was happening in the night I'm like full on all night I'm up and down not knowing what what was happening

and then I said okay well I need to tell you because moving forward if anything leads to anything this relationship thing or we go any further I need you to know that I've been what I've been through I then told him the story and I expected him to run that was my first reaction I thought he's gonna run as fast as he can and he said obviously he felt really really sorry he said I'm so sorry I said no no don't say any of that but I said I just want you to know and I'm okay if you don't want to go ahead yeah and he's like no it's not fine what has happened to you but it's with me said I'm willing to go through this I don't think it was easy for my I mean we are we are separated and we're going through divorce but it wasn't easy for my ex-husband what he had

to go through with my nightmares he's been really supportive he knew and I told him I said the only thing you can do to really help me if I'm getting up in the night and I'm honestly quite scary you just turn the light on and then all my senses come back and i i get orientated because i have to sleep with the light on so he said okay well we'll leave a light on a little bit somewhere so you at least when you're waking up i don't have to wake up and turn the light on so in all these years we've been together and we created a family there's always been a light somewhere lightly in the bathroom or somewhere so in case i get up i then because it is is quite scary when i mean now it's a lot milder i don't maybe i don't have as many nightmares i'm a bit better at it i'm

getting better but they used to be horrific like every night all night every night did any of your perpetrators ever be held to account or did any of them ever face any criminal action for what happened to you what they did to you yeah the guys in kosovo they got arrested and sent to prison and they also were meant to be sent to hague they had a witness an old man that witnessed what they've done over the years they executed him so they terminated him basically and then they got out of prison into a hospital prison and all sorts i didn't name them on the book because i didn't want the book to be a target for hunting them down because they are very dangerous and europe is really small and these people are everywhere so the fact that they've been in prison

and they've come out that raises alarm bells for me like huge red flags i can imagine so you know it's like i always meant it to do good in sense of that raise awareness try and do as much as i can on the news get people involved to do the charities help charities support the victims we've got them in the uk it's come to my attention in the last few years since i've been speaking we have survivors of human trafficking British nationals English girls being trafficked to Holland by their partners or threatened to kill their families and then get into human trafficking here in the UK and so when we think of human trafficking we instantly think okay it has to be into another country and it has to be locked up it has to be all of this but actually

sex slavery like the prostitution the begging and there's so many different levels of human trafficking and control so there is loads of girls we i've interviewed because i wanted to do a podcast and get get these people to to tell their stories give them a platform to tell their stories and see what the government is going to do about this how is it possible there is no war in the uk for these girls to be in holland in the red district human trafficked working for a pimp they have no passport that's taken away and then all my agents that go undercover and rescue children and women it's it's just insane i've been in so many scenarios involved like with the war in ukraine saving girls children they ended up in sweden and that was by luck in fact

because they were meant to be sent somewhere else and the container ended up in Sweden in their waters and then the Swedish government took it over and I don't know what happened to the children after that. But, you know, in the process of me trying to help save the refugees from human trafficking, we found out so many informations on what was going on. So many different panels have taken place for the victims

just to confirm that what they are saying is true and it has to be believed because sometimes these stories are so crazy that people think, well, it can't be true, surely, you know. And so they much rather live comfortably not knowing than being slightly uncomfortable knowing and potentially being informed

and then raise awareness. I mean, I don't ask much when people are listening. I just say, be vigilant. What I'm sharing here is not just for me. This is for me to help the causes to stop human trafficking, but this is for you so you can then spread this lecture or this information with your children.

Don't be afraid to tell children. Boys are at risk. Girls are at risk. You know, they go missing all the time. I think it's a real common misconception that the trafficking and the organ harvesting is not happening and from only war-torn countries and third world countries because it's absolutely not. What do you know now about statistics of this still happening around the world?

Has it gotten any better or do you think it's gotten worse? Well, the last person I spoke to about statistics, it was just around the time when I published the book and it was an ex-CIA agent and he shocked me with information because I did a podcast with a guy in America and he was part of the podcast because he wanted this kind of content to get out. he told me on the phone he said it's 150 million this is then three years ago 150 million people get trafficked every year globally children go missing every year globally women you know tourists i mean it's very very hard for the law you know us as civilians we can only help each

other and raise awareness but i think this has to be done with we have got all this amazing tech cameras we can detect so many things we can cure so many diseases yet we haven't come up with anything that could help us search these kids that are going missing to i mean when when the war in syria started i was based in singapore then i lived there for five years and i had the news of the world then call me this is in 2000 I can't remember the years but 2013 14 no 14 15 maybe around these years and they said to me we hear that you have a story because I was speaking a lot with you and women in Singapore and I was raising funds for charities and not just like human trafficking but sexual abuse and I just like to help in any causes like this and so they said

do you think the the syrian children so what the syrian refugees were doing they had to track through balkan through obviously serbia macedonia serbia through serbia into into actual europe and where my parents used to live or where i used to live it's the area they had to track through to get into trucks and so on i don't know how many thousands of children of these syrians refugees went missing with thousands and my the question was do you think it's the same people and i didn't even have to think it i just said 100 because they're still at large you know they're still at large they're still doing business this is how they do they do business killing is their business so this is happening all the time and with with what's happening now

in america it's another level it's like everybody involved it makes me sick yeah the most shocking thing that we're seeing now is when you say 150 million children and young women have disappeared into that trafficking ring your first thought is well how the fuck are there that many people if there's that many people missing how are there that many people buying them how is the industry that big who is doing this and now with the the unpacking of the Epstein files it's absolutely abhorrent and shocking to see just who is behind this because you just do not think that these are quote-unquote respectable people in power people with money people that you see walking down the street that you would think are really great respectable civilians and people of the community

and a lot of the time they are the people that are behind these the people that are behind the trafficking and it's but there's so many layers of it you also there's people who who pay for prostitution who also won't necessarily know that the person that they're having sex with is someone who has been trafficked like there's so many layers to the insidiousness of this and rather i can i mean we can all see how raw it is every time you have to speak this story and how how you have to tell what happened to you and we're so grateful for you sharing it but um it must be an incredibly challenging thing to constantly have to revisit this trauma in order to help other people well you know i i got shown so much cruelty and so much pain at least this time around i'm doing it

because i have a free will to do so to the least i can do is to speak out because i know victims they don't make it out alive and the very few that do they never speak out they're scared they get eliminated all sorts of stuff and i'm not scared but i you have to do this job with a lot of um what's the word with sensitivity and as careful as you possibly can without you can't start a war that you can't finish if you see what i'm trying to say i am trying to do good it's the government's place so people in the higher power to take action to potentially work out who these people are and deal with them without me having to say so it's a lifetime kind of commitment this is not for me a year two years I've been I've been at this for so long now trying

to I started to speak in Asia without a book or anything I was just constantly raising funds for charities and doing speeches trying to help the helpers that were being trafficked and being kept you know unpaid working it's like a slave modern slavery per se so I've been involved in so many cases I can't even mention the things I do behind the scenes but it's a lifetime commitment this is not for me it's not like a another book that gets published or another story for me it is the story and it will die when I die my mission hopefully doesn't die when I die hopefully will crack on and it will do good and people can use it to do good but you have to be uncomfortable to make a change in the world and I'm willing to be uncomfortable because it brings me so much

happiness when I know that it's helping someone and it doesn't even have to just help the human trafficking survivors there is I've had emails saying to me I was in a dark kind of moment of my life and I was about to end it and this and that and I heard your podcast and it sort of made me think twice here you were trying to survive and here I am I'm alive I have a freedom of speech and I'm still trying to take my own life that's powerful so it's just also I'm trying to showcase the resilience that we possess if we choose to learn from the struggles that we we get sent our way it is really meant to teach us so simultaneously I'm doing the raising awareness for human trafficking but also resilience for human in general and hearing your story definitely and

I'm sure everybody will absolutely put things into perspective I know for me just listening in the last hour or so I've been doing a lot of thinking while we're doing it thinking wow we live in such a lucky country and we are so lucky to have been born here and I can't thank you enough for coming and sharing your story with us you are doing incredible work we are going to link everything that you are doing in your book and a charity that you recommend that helps we're going to link all of that in our show notes so if people can go and have a look and find out more but thank you for reliving your story so that other people can survive thank you for giving me the platform to speak and being patient with me and my father passed away around the same time

as you guys reached out to me so it was my whole world collapsed and so we're so sorry for what you've gone through hey i'm still ticking yeah you are absolutely Thank you.