I Kidnap Girls: Stealing from Traffickers, Restoring Their Victims

By Pamela Rigdon

I kidnap girls from their traffickers. Their pimps never know it until the girls are in the car with me, speeding toward the safe house." Iana Matei did not always do such things. In fact, Matei, a once battered, imprisoned woman, had spent 10 years carefully constructing a better life halfway around the world. This life was interrupted by a single phone call that would eventually lead to the rescue of over 700 victims of forced prostitution. Iana Matei has achieved notoriety in the international community for her fight against human trafficking in eastern Europe - including the Reader's Digest European of the Year award in 2010. However, her solutions are local: teaching rescued children vocational skills and developing projects with sustainable jobs. Thus depriving traffickers of one of their most valuable tools: the false promise of work abroad. Author Pamela Rigdon shares a fictionalized biographical account of Iana Matei's initiation into the world of human trafficking. The three girls profiled in I Kidnap Girls -Tara, Louisa and Nicoletta - are composites of real-life experiences from the rescued victims. Profits from the sale of each book go to fund lana Matei's work in Romania. Matei works to educate employees and volunteers working in refugee centers, on identifying vulnerable Ukrainians in danger of being trafficked.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Proisle Publishing Services
• Release date: Nov 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781959449751

Book preview

Acknowledgements

First of all I want to thank my family and friends who encouraged me throughout the writing of this book (there were so many, forgive me if I don’t mention you all by name). I’m grateful to Iana Matei for her continued work that provided the inspiration for this book. I would like to thank my critique group and those who worked with me in the early stages. Thank you for your encouragement and for not shying away from the dark parts of this story.

A special thank you goes to Lexi Scott at Proisle Publishing and her editorial team for their fine-tuning. Thank you also to Nick Ziros, who convinced me to put the story out there.

Thank you to Patti Foley, who accompanied me to Romania and transcribed the interview tapes. Thank you to my daughter Rachel Bjork, for also going to Romania and asking questions whose answers helped shape this book. Thank you also to my daughter, Amee Spadaro, for her encouragement along the way. Lastly, thank you to my son, Joel Ravan, who has been there with a good word and a song that fills my heart.

Introduction

I KIDNAP GIRLS DEPICTS how a phone call to one woman led to the rescue of over 700 victims of human trafficking and forced prostitution.

I Kidnap Girls presents a peek into Iana's world, where all traffickers don't get caught and most don't go to prison. They roam the streets freely and could show up at any moment. The girls don't all stay out of prostitution. The judges don't all do their jobs and her funding sources don't always come through.

I Kidnap Girls opens in 1998 with a phone call from the police department in Pitești Romania asking psychologist, Iana Matei, to come and get some prostitutes returning to Romania from Macedonia, bring them some clothes, take them to the hospital for a syphilis test and to find them a place to stay. The whores turn out to be children. The orphanage director doesn't want them. They would be a bad influence on the other children, says the Director of Social Services. Iana launches into a diatribe about not protecting these children.

She faces the decision of whether to take the girls and open herself to all the risks involved. Traffickers consider the girls their property. They will want their property back. The pimps don't want the girls to obtain identification documents that would declare them a person. Under Romanian law, it's impossible to commit a crime against someone who doesn't exist. If anything were to happen to the girls, there would be no investigation or trial. If anything were to happen to an aid worker who assisted them it would be said that the aid worker was caught aiding criminals.

I Kidnap Girls neither seeks to verify claims made by others about human trafficking and forced prostitution, nor to deny them. It is instead a story, not so much depicting the way things are and how the issue of human trafficking should be handled, but about the way these issues affect the work that Iana does. It's not that Iana doesn't have opinions about the multifaceted subject of trafficking, and how governments respond and the way law enforcement does or does not carry through. She possesses strong opinions, and they will come out, but they come out in the telling of her story. Her views are all filtered through the same lens: How does this affect the girls and the women that I work with? How would this help or hinder those who have already suffered so much?

The purpose of Iana's story isn't an expose or a recording of facts and figures, of which she is the expert and many books or televised broadcasts about trafficking and forced prostitution in Eastern Europe quote from statistics she has provided. Its goal is commercial in nature. Iana needs money to sustain her work.

Her vision goes beyond trying to outlaw prostitution or decide whether or not clients should be prosecuted. Since most victims of trafficking and forced prostitution get sucked into their situations in pursuit of jobs, her theory is that providing jobs robs the trafficker of his power. By making girls and women self-sustainable, a trafficker coming through isn't offering them anything they don't already have or that they can't obtain for themselves.

In I Kidnap Girls, Iana conveys the challenges of girls and women in the process of gaining stability in an unsteady economy within an unstable government while dealing with the psychological and physical effects of years of abuse, all amidst societal disapproval and alienation.

Iana Matei fights to free victims of the human sex slave industry. Whether speaking to the US State Department, the European Commission on Trafficking, The United Nations Human Development Global Forum, or to one abused, frightened girl, Iana brings the same convincing message: Trafficking is not okay, and it's up to us to do something about it.

Iana often says her most dangerous weapon is her big mouth. She began opening her mouth against trafficking and forced prostitution in 1998, when three girls captured her heart. Their stories left her wide-eyed. Although she is considered an expert on facts and figures involving trafficking in the Balkans (the US government and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime collaborate with her for data), it's Iana's passion and compassion that cause her to speak out in ways that will be heard.

Designated by Readers Digest as European of the Year 2010, awarded the Abolitionist Award by the House of Lords in 2007, and declared a hero by the US State Department in 2006, these are not the rewards Iana prizes. The one she does prize is when a girl reclaims her personhood and her self-respect. So far, Iana has aided over 700 victims of forced prostitution as they regained possession of their own lives.

Iana speaks out in ways that anyone can understand. If she is talking with a pimp ambassador who's attempting to gain entrance into the girl's safe house, she communicates what needs to be communicated and somehow she sends him away whining. Iana uses her giftedness to get her message across, and people listen.

Iana speaks to churches and civic groups, and anyone else she's put in front of. If she doesn't make it to heaven, I'm sure the devil doesn't possess enough patience to keep her. He'll toss her out so hard she'll probably land at St. Peter's feet, right near the Pearly Gates.

While the book tells the stories of a total of three girls, some a composite and others with details scrambled to protect their privacy, all are a representation of the thousands of girls trafficked from Eastern Europe each year.

Reason For Writing This Book

(Pamela Rigdon)

I SPENT EIGHT YEARS living in Romania where I worked with a humanitarian foundation serving abandoned children. In the late 1980s, the world was shocked to see the situation inside Romanian orphanages. By the time I arrived in 1993, many of these children— approaching their teens—had left the orphanages for the streets. They lived down under the manhole covers, below the street, huddled around sewer pipes for warmth. The cold and hunger weren't their worst enemies. These proved to be men in shiny, cars with dark tinted windows, who'd pull over and stare at the children. They would motion and point to a child. An adult or an older child would emerge from the car and walk over to the child and stand, huddling with him/her for a few minutes. Then the child would get into the car. The car would drive off. The child wouldn't be heard from again for weeks, months, and maybe never. This was my introduction to child prostitution. These children were promised food, a bed, and clothes. What they weren't told was that they would have to have sex with twenty or thirty people a day and probably travel to a different country where they didn't know the language and their documents would be taken from them. They would be there illegally at the mercy of pimps. I saw this happen and I was unable to do a thing about it. In 1998 I got a call from a woman who worked with the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest. She asked if our foundation would assist a Romanian woman (Iana Matei) who wanted to open a safe house for girls who had been prostituted against their will. I met with Iana and I was drawn to her immediately.

A Short, blonde woman of about forty–who never stopped talking–greeted me at the Metro station where I picked her up. It didn’t take long to realize that this woman not only knew her way around in the complicated, ever-changing Romanian governmental system (something it takes years if ever a westerner to comprehend) but she was getting things done. Many western foundations had come and gone because of the frustrations of not understanding the system and the corruption.

I quickly recognized that this woman had what it took to hold her own against all of this. I was right. In the last three years I lived in Romania, Iana established a safe house for girls who had been forced into prostitution. She was also instrumental in the conviction and imprisonment of some of the most notorious pimps of minor-aged victims.

As the years went by, I returned to the states and resumed my life. What I had seen while in Romania haunted me. I still wanted to do something.

I called Iana one day. She told me she was developing self-sustainability program to provide at-risk girls in one of the economically hardest hit areas of Romania. Writing this book is my way if contributing. It’s not that Iana needs me to be able to write a book. She’s perfectly capable of doing that herself, and she probably would do it...if she weren’t busy rescuing girls and doing things that only Iana can do. Her story is worth telling, and it’s my honor todo so. Read it with your heart.

Since I first wrote this section, a book about Iana has been published in Europe (a memoir) and as a document (unedited version) in English. It’s written from more of a journalistic perspective. The book I offer reads more like a novel and I would classify it as a fictionalized version of a real character and real events.

Explanation

IN THE TELLING OF THIS STORY, I have changed details of dates, times, and places to protect the identities of those forced into prostitution. I have also scrambled some of the details of their circumstances to further protect their privacy.

In 1998, when the police from Pitești Romania first contacted Iana, the girls she came for had been transported within Romania. However the situation quickly escalated into the transportation of girls over the border. The girls I depicted in this book are a representation of the girls Iana has spent the majority of the past twenty plus years rescuing.

I have also compressed events and details in order to fit Iana's huge life between the covers of this book and to provide a smoother read. I have at all times during the writing worked hard to preserve the spirit of the truth, rather than a recitation of facts or simply what happened. There are several places in the book where we worked to protect Iana's continued work within the country and disguised and changed details in order for her to maintain working relationships. For these reasons I would rather place this book into the novel inspired by a true story, than in the straight memoir or non-fiction section of the bookstore. Not because her story isn't true, but because so much care had to go into the protection of the work and the protection of the girl's identities. The girls are a representation of the girl's Iana has assisted.

The characters of Grigore, the police officer and Silvu Sabu, the Director of Social Services are based on real characters.

Readership

FOR ANYONE WHO HAS EVER possessed the desire to dance upon injustice.

It's for those who:

Won't look the other way as pimps buy, sell, and transport millions of minor-aged girls, forcing them into prostitution.

Will recognize the atrocities committed by those in pursuit of sex and cheap labor.

Want to be aware of the cruelties perpetrated on the most vulnerable in our society and celebrate the life of one who cares.

Wonder how a once battered woman, living in a corrupt, broken society, in her efforts to assist a few trafficked girls, winds up battling crooked administration and organized crime.

Wish to share in her victory as governments and traffickers alike recognize her as a force to be reckoned with.

It's how one woman, in the midst of saving others, saves herself.

Author’s Note

By Iana Matei

I KIDNAP GIRLS FROM THEIR TRAFFICKERS. Their pimps never know it until the girls are in the car with me, speeding toward the safe house. This is my greatest pleasure.

I often get calls from traffickers, demanding that I give the girls back or they'll kill me. I never do it. I'm still alive and a few of them are in jail.

Once I got a call from the police. They confronted me. Did you take one of Bucu's girls? He wants her back. I just about had a heart attack. With this statement, they let me know whose side they were on.

Kidnapping the girls is the easy part of my job. The hard part begins once the girl is safe and attempts her journey toward a stable life. Romanian society says: All of this is your own fault. You went with bad people and look what happened. You shouldn't be so stupid.

My book, I Kidnap Girls, describes how I got involved with victims of human trafficking. It also portrays some very courageous girls as they move forward into health, healing, and self-sustainability.

Happy Reading!

Iana Matei

The Call

Pitești Romania, 1998

SO MANY THINGS IN LIFE start with a phone call...

Iana, I've got three prostitutes here at the police station. They've been working in Macedonia. Now they're back in Romania. They have no identification documents, no visas, and no place to stay. We need some clothes to take them to the doctor to get tested for syphilis...

I rolled my eyes. What day aren't there a few prostitutes at the police station?

That's unfortunate, Alex, but why are you calling me? I don't work with prostitutes. I work with children. Children in the streets. Children in the orphanage.

I know, Iana, but what am I supposed to do? Lock them up or put them in the streets? Or, should I let the guys here have some time alone with them?

I shifted in my chair. You want me to drop everything to come and get three prostitutes? Even though they've probably just had a fight with their pimp and run off? You want me to find them a place to stay, knowing their pimp wants his property back? That he's probably right behind them!

I'm in a tight spot, Iana. He let out a deep sigh. I promised them protection if they testified against their pimp.

And, I'm their protection?

We'll provide an apartment and police surveillance. Come on, Iana. I just need my brilliant, beautiful, blonde psychologist friend to come down here and offer me her expertise.

Stop trying to manipulate me, Alex. You don't have what it takes.

Ouch, Iana! Do that again! I feel such pleasure when you hurt me. OHHh, he moaned.

Sicko clown. Can't he ever be serious? Alex, nu am prost! (I'm not stupid.) My voice sped up like a record out of sync. Remember the aid worker from England who took in a couple of prostitutes? Remember the headlines in The Bucharest!?: ENGLISH AID WORKER KEEPS WOMEN LOCKED IN APARTMENT IN EXCHANGE FOR SEXUAL FAVORS.

Although the allegations proved false, the newspaper never printed a retraction and the pimps beat him up.

I started to slam the phone down when I heard a man hollering in the background.

Are you whores back in Romania because you already screwed all the men in Macedonia? Now you're back for real Romanian men, so you can infect us with your diseases?

I kept listening. A high, thin voice pleaded, No, no you don't understand.

The man interrupted. I understand perfectly. The pimps gave you the right price. You went with them to Macedonia. End of story. All three of you are just another bunch of filthy, stinking, whores. Why did you come back? No one wants you here!

Alex remained silent so I could hear what was going on.

Finally he said, "Iana, the yelling—that guy, he's my boss. As you can hear, he's an idiot. These are young prostitutes. He plans to put them