GANG-RAPED AT 6, TRAFFICKED FOR PROSTITUTION AT 20, NIGERIAN LADY NARRATES HER JOURNEY INTO SEX SLAVERY IN EUROPE
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Joseph Omoniyi
In a report released by CNN, a Nigerian sex slave, Nadège, who managed to escape, narrated how she was gang raped at 6, raped again at 15 and had her first abortion, and then trafficked for prostitution at 20.
Like them, Nadège said she was trafficked from Nigeria to France and forced into sexual slavery, at €20 ($23) per client, to pay off a colossal debt to a female Nigerian pimp known as a “madam.” “I was told it was like a paradise”, she said.
Nadège, who could not give her real name for safety reasons, grew up in southern Nigeria. She said that, when she was just six, she was raped by a group of neighbors. Her parents sent her to live with an aunt. But Nadège says her aunt was murdered after refusing a local gangster’s marriage proposal for her niece. Nadège discovered her aunt’s dead body.
At 15, Nadège said she was raped once again and had her first abortion. Alone, she was easy prey for traffickers. A madam she met in Lagos promised her a better life in Europe, working as a waitress.
“I was told it was like a paradise,” Nadège tells CNN. “But getting here, it was like from frying pan to fire.”
The European Asylum Support Office, EASO, says that recruitment for trafficking to Europe is strongly concentrated in Edo State, in southern Nigeria, the region where Nadège was born.
According to her, before leaving, the madam made Nadège swear an oath at a “juju” temple with a native doctor of Ayelala, a traditional belief system from southern Nigeria.
Nadège swore to repay her madam for sending her to Europe, and to never speak of her oath, or her debt, to anyone. It’s the same for so many Nigerian women trafficked for sex.
Yehudi Pelosi, a lawyer who specializes in asylum law and human trafficking, said that as part of the ceremony the women were often forced to eat a kola nut and a chicken heart, and drink a concoction of gin and blood. Some of their pubic hair is taken, and their head, breasts and shoulders are often ritually scarred.
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