Bought and Sold
A heart-stopping story of lies, brutality and fear. British girl Megan Stephens tells the true story of how an idyllic Mediterranean holiday turned into an unimaginable nightmare when she was tricked into becoming a victim of human trafficking and held captive for six years by deception, threats and violence.While on holiday with her mother at a popular Mediterranean coastal resort, Megan fell in love. Just 14 years old, naïve and vulnerable, she had no reason to suspect that the man who said he loved her would commit the ultimate betrayal of her trust.When her mother returned to England, Megan stayed with Jak, who said he would find her a job as a waitress and promised they would be together forever. But when Megan travelled to the city with Jak, his attitude quickly changed and instead of finding her work as a waitress, he allowed her to be raped and then sold her to a human trafficker.Abandoned by Jak but still unable to accept that everything he’d told her had been a lie, Megan was coerced by threats and violence into working as a prostitute in private homes and brothels. Then the trafficker threatened her mother’s life and it was Megan’s turn to lie: sending her mother the staged photographs that had been taken of her apparently working as a waitress in a cafe, she told her she was happy.Too frightened and bewildered to trust or reach out to anyone, Megan remained locked in a world of brutality and abuse for six years. In the end, there only seemed to be one way out.Megan’s powerful story reveals the devastating realities of human trafficking and the fear that imprisons its victims more effectively than any cage could ever do.
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HarperElement
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First published by HarperElement 2015
FIRST EDITION
© Megan Stephens and Jane Smith 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Cover photograph © Yolande de Kort/Trevillion Images (posed by model)
Megan Stephens and Jane Smith assert the moral
right to be identified as the authors of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780007594078
Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2015 ISBN: 9780007594085
Version: 2014-12-17
I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who have supported and stuck by me throughout my recovery process.
First, I would like to give special thanks to John and Anthony for giving me the strength to carry on through life and for showing me that men are not all the same.
I would also like to thank the girls in recovery I have met along the way for their inspiration and encouragement to keep going, my grandparents for their gentle and loving hearts, and all the other amazing people who have given me hope and become my friends.
And thank you to my mum for all your support and love, especially during recent times. I love you so much.
by Sophie Hayes*
I was pleased to be asked to write a foreword to Megan’s deeply moving story. Then I thought about it a bit more and began to get anxious: it felt like a big responsibility to introduce something so personal and so incredibly important to Megan. I needn’t have worried though. As soon as I read the manuscript of her amazing book Bought and Sold, I realised that Megan can speak for herself and that what I was really being asked to do was give my support to another survivor of sex trafficking. And as supporting survivors of human trafficking is a cause that’s very close to my heart, I would like to add my voice to Megan’s and reiterate a couple of the points she raises in her book.
One of the aspects of Megan’s story that particularly struck me – apart from her bravery and the brutality of the treatment she endured for so long – was her explanation of the psychological fear that prevented her from trying to escape, even when she apparently had opportunities to do so.
Being paralysed by fear and by the belief that, in some way, you deserve the terrible things that are being done to you are common themes among people who’ve been trafficked for sex. I know it’s an aspect that some people find impossible to understand. Perhaps I wouldn’t have understood it either, before it happened to me.
The truth is that, although all human traffickers are ruthless criminals, most of them aren’t stupid, and it isn’t purely by chance that they choose victims who are likely to be compliant – and very frightened – in response to physical violence and psychological bullying. If reading Megan’s story makes a few more people understand that, she will have done a great service to other victims and survivors of trafficking.
It wasn’t very long ago that no one talked openly about child or domestic abuse. Then a few extraordinarily brave people told their stories and, gradually, we started to gain a better understanding of the true extent of these crimes and of the devastating effects they have on their victims. Now, we need to do the same thing in relation to human trafficking. By raising awareness of an appalling crime that can affect anyone, male or female, of any age, nationality, intellectual ability or social background, Megan’s book may actually save lives.
At the Sophie Hayes Foundation, we’ve recently set up a Survivors’ Network to enable young women like Megan to meet other women who’ve had similar experiences and who share their sense of isolation, guilt and loneliness. For some of our ‘survivors’, it’s the first time they’ve been able to talk openly about their experiences to people they can trust. I’ve been touched and very impressed to witness the support they give each other; it’s a privilege to watch them evolve and grow into the people they were always meant to be. One of the women in the Survivors’ Network writes amazing poems, another is a talented artist, some have already been to college and others are about to start.
