…other recalls horror of being kept a sex slave

SEVERELY beaten, raped, and starved near to death, the last person she expected seeing was her father, accompanied by a policeman, coming through the door of the East Bank Berbice house where she’d been left while her captors went about their business.

And while she did not elaborate on how the rescue unfolded, she clearly recounted how, surviving on just bare tennis rolls and tea, she was held captive for about a month on what in her young 13-year-old mind appears to be a ‘ganja farm’ somewhere up the Berbice River, where she befriended a 12-year-old, who, like her, was made to do domestic chores by day, and play the wife to their captors at night.

As she speaks, there’s no mistaking the haunted look in her eyes at the mention of her young friend, who she feels is still being held against her will.
The whole sordid affair all came to light recently when the mother of the still missing 12-year-old paid a visit to the office of the Prime Minister in Region 6, seeking their assistance in finding her after making several reports to the police to no avail.

The child reportedly left home on June 16 to run an errand at a nearby shop. It would be the last her parents and siblings would ever see or hear of her.

Her mother told the Guyana Chronicle that besides filing a missing person’s report with the police in Berbice, family members had also distributed flyers all across the County, in the hope that someone would recognise the child and come forward with information as to her wheresabout.

She said that about a month after her daughter had gone missing, the 13-year-old reached out to her, and what she had to tell her not only gave her goose bumps but moved her to tears.

THE MEETING
“She ask if I know where my daughter at. I said, ‘No, I am looking for her.’ She then tell me where she is, and that she is being beaten; forced to do things against her will,” the clearly distraught woman said, adding:

“It’s been six months already; I never gave up on her. I am calling on the President, the Police, and all organisations who can help me find my daughter.
“I praying to get her home alive; I run to the police here almost every day for an update, but no help.”

Picking up the story from there, the 13-year-old told how she came to be kidnapped. She said that it was while she was at the New Amsterdam Market that she was approached by this strange woman, asking after her mother.

And while her story is a bit hazy, as far as the Guyana Chronicle could gather, the woman was somehow able to coerce her into accompanying her, by vehicle, to an unnamed village some distance away so she could get the $200 she ostensibly owed her father and give it to her. She even promised the child that she would take her safely back to the marketplace where she’d picked her up from.

The child said she began to panic when the journey seemed to be taking longer than anticipated. She would become even more suspicious when they did finally arrive at their destination, there was a youngster, who had what appeared to a gun in his waist, waiting there on a motorcycle.

Things would get even more dicey, she said, when she asked what they were up to, as both parties immediately set upon her, slapping her around. She would later learn that the boy was the woman’s son.

A SHORT RIDE
After being forced to take a short ride on the motorcycle, the child said they finally stopped at a house with several other male occupants. And possibly to prevent her from trying to escape, someone had the presence of mind to bound her, hands and feet.

But that was just the beginning, as the horrifying journey would continue late into the night with a long boat ride upriver. And when they did finally reach their destination, she was taken to a camp, where she saw the missing 12-year-old tied to a post. A closer look would reveal she had marks of violence about her body.

That night, she said, she lost her innocence, as both she and the 12-year-old were beaten into submission. She said they tried on many occasions to escape, but never succeeded.