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Dangoule's Story Dangoule was a 16 year old girl from Lithuania with the same dreams and the same hopes for the future as any other teenager. She was entice by the man she loved and trusted to go to Sweden with promises of a better life and a steady job picking vegetables. She arrived to Kristianstad, a city in the south of Sweden, on the 17th of November, 1999. Her passport was taken from her and she was locked up in an apartment and told that she now had a debt of 20,000 Euros for her travel, passport and accomodation costs. Dangoule was beated, raped, starved and humiliated. Her pimp told her that if she informed anyone of her situation, she would be thrown in prison since prostitution is a crime in Sweden. Moreover, she was an illegal immigrant since her passport was faked. The terror forcced Dangoule to be silent and to service several customers per day. On the 7th of January 2000, in utter despair, Dangoule jumped from a bridge to end her life.
Maria's story Maria was thirteen years old, waiting tables in a suburb of Mexico City when she was approached by a wealty Texan. When he asked why she was working at such a young age, Maria explained she needed to help her family earn money. The Texan offered her a job waiting tables in America, where she would have beautiful clothes, her own bedroom and even a cell phone! He explained she would make lots of money and be able to send it home. She ran home to tell her parents, who were horrified and told her never to speak to the man again. A few days later he came back and left a $200 tip. He told her if she wanted the job, she should meet him that night. Maria snuck out and was met by 4 men who threw her in the back of a truck with several other girls, ranging in age from 9 to 15 years old. They were driven out of the city, gang raped and beaten for hours. Afterwards they were forced to walk miles to cross the border. The next morning she said the Texan who explained she would be working in a brothel and if she ever complained or tried to run away she and her family would be killed. Seven brothels and four years later Maria was able to escape to tell her story.
Dulce's Story Dulce was a young single mother, raising her two small daughters in the Dominican Republic with the help of her own precious mother. One her own, she struggled to find the time and work to provide for her children. When Dulce met a woman in Santo Domingo who promised her a job at her pizzeria in Mar de Plata, Argentina, she thought this was an opportunity she had to take to care for her children. Little did she know the future looming. The woman who had offered Dulce a job was a professional trafficer, who recuited women like Dulce for a trafficing ring. After Dulce arrived in Argentina, she and three other women were taken to a brothel called La Moneta in Mar de Plata. Dulce was still unaware of what was happening, until she heard her recruiter tell the owner to "not let the women leave the apartment." Dulce had been decieved, and now, far away from home, she was trapped. The brothel owner as a recruiter locked Dulce and the other three women in the apartment and confiscated their passports, so that they had no way to travel around and outside the country if they escaped. Dulce was then forced to work in the motel, prostituted out to several clients each day. Her dreams of sending money back to her children and mother were shattereed, and Dulce missed her family terribly. Finally, one man who came to the brothel and discovered Dulce helped her escape to his home, where she was living when Shared Hope and its partneres in the Dominican Republic found her. Back in the Dominican Republic, Dulce's mother had not given up on finding here daughter. Years after Dulce's disappearance, a neighbor in the Dominican Republic heard the Hope of Hope's radio ad about sex trafficking and told Dulce's mother to call for help. After hearing Dulce's story, the Hope of Hope was able to connect with a network of authorities and trustworthy individuals in Argentia, and bring Dulce home to the Dominican Republic. Today she is safe, living again near her mother, with her two beautiful daughters.
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