WHICH PLACE OF REFUGEE IS THE RIGHT ONE FOR YOU?
To forget my past and to run away from the feeling of sadness, I started drinking alcohol every night and sought warmth in male validation...
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On a cold, wet, drizzly late spring day in March, we received an emergency call from room 12 - pc14 in Hanoi, asking us to take responsibility on a case of a trafficking victim returning from China. Immediately, a social worker and I were on our way. Arriving at No. 7 Ho Thien Quang, we met the team leader and a police investigation officer from room 12 who were working with the victim, a girl with sleepless, haggard face and wrinkled clothes. After talking to the police and answering their questions, we used professional measures to quickly confirm what had happened to the girl. V was a victim of human trafficking to China, forced to become a wife and returned to Vietnam in mid-2010. Adding to that, she was also a victim of a trafficking case when she was 10 years old. Through our conversation, we learned that her name is T.T.A.V, she originally came from a midland province and was working as a laborer in Hanoi.
V is the second daughter of a poor farmer family, her is older brother who is a grown up and still lives at his parents, due to his instable health . V's childhood only consists out of sad memories, characterized by beatings and scoldings during the frugal meals of her father. He was an alcoholic and drunk all the time, because he felt so frustrated by poverty.
My mother had to pay for his behavior, mentally and physically. I felt so sorry for her, my father made her become a scared, helpless and lonely women. Any time I asked her why endures it, her only answer was: "because he works so hard".
When she was pregnant with me, my mother became seriously ill and never fully recovered, so she had to completely rely on her husband. Maybe that's why I didn't learn to speak until I was 7-8 years old and why my dad always scolds me as "crazy" or "mad"?
After finishing 3rd grade, I dropped out of school, wandering around all day. Sometimes I didn't come home, my parents never cared. One time I wanted to go to a friend's house, something terrible happened instead. I was tricked by a cruel and heartless motorbike taxi driver into a coffee shop in Ha Tay.
V still clearly remembers the name and color of the motorbike he rode. Because she was too young, the shop owner kept her 2 years before forcing her into prostitution.
At first I did not accept, so I was beaten and locked up - forced to agree on working as a until the age of 15. I was lucky enough to be ransomed by a taxi driver and brought back to Hanoi to work for a restaurant. After more than a year of, I quit my job to return home. When they heard about what happened to me during the 4 years I was away from home, no one believed me. My father doubted it the most: obviously the girl he used to scold as crazy turned out to be exactly what he said.
Frustrated, I left to go back to Hanoi to find a job and was tricked once again. Two dishonest people sold me to Guangxi, China. Luckily the man who bought me was young, he was already married and had a child of his own, he treated me quite well. I got pregnant twice, but both times I had a miscarriage. Seeing that my health was not good and I was sick often, I asked my husband to let me return to Vietnam, he accepted. In mid-2012, I returned to my family after 3 years of being a wife in a foreign country. I heard that my Chinese husband bought another Vietnamese girl to replace me.
After returning to Vietnam, I brought reports to several places with the hope of forcing those who cheated and sold me to pay for their crimes, but nothing happened. Some places refused to accept accusations, some places accepted them but I never received no response. Not wanting to return to my hometown, I struggled to make a living in Hanoi.
I often feel trapped, hunted by insomnia and nightmares. There are dreams, in which I scream desperately, asking my father not to hit my mother, only to wake up disturbed and to realize, it was nothing but a bad dream. To forget my past and to run away from the feeling of sadness, I started drinking alcohol every night and sought warmth in male validation, even by the men who redeemed me from the brothel years ago. I naively believed that they loved me and that one day they would marry me.
Amidst the chaos of that trauma, I still ached to find justice for myself and tried bring the perpetrator to light. Thanks to someone's guidance, I went to the Social Evils Investigation Police Department - PC45 Hanoi. Finally someone listened to me, they believed my testimony, accepted my application and even verified more of the information I had. They helped me find Peace House. This place helped me cure my mental wounds and regain faith in life and people. Binh Binh House gives me the opportunity to learn a profession and rediscover myself to confidently step into the future.
Notes from social worker - Peace House
