Mary is a busy woman. As well as raising a daughter, working and studying, she has dreams of becoming a social worker so that one day she can help others like herself recover from trauma.
Unfortunately, Mary is no stranger to trauma, and her recovery journey has been long. However, she is a strong woman, and despite a painful past, she has worked hard on recovering her crushed self-esteem in order to move forward with her life, and fill it with purpose.
“I wasn’t in a good place when I met Causeway,” said Mary. “I was in pain. I was scared to have a relationship with them as I couldn’t believe they wanted to do good for me, but they gave me the confidence I didn’t have. I would have struggled without them.”
Mary*, who now lives in Manchester with her young daughter, came to the UK to study from Malawi.
For a while, everything went well. Mary lived in student accommodation in Manchester and enjoyed her studies. She made friends, and took on a part time job.
“I met one lady at college who was also from Malawi,” said Mary. “We became friends and she introduced me to her boyfriend and his friends. They said the student accommodation I was staying in was charging too much and that I should live with them. I was grateful.”
Mary’s new friends (one female and three males all from Malawi) disliked her meeting other friends and persuaded her they were bad people, slowly isolating her from her support network.
They then demanded that she hand over her passport and documents in order to ‘help renew her visa’. The visa never materialised and the documents never returned.
Without her visa, Mary lost her job and college place, and was taken to Leicester by her friends to help her ‘avoid the authorities and stay in England.’
“That’s when they changed,’ said Mary. “These people whom I had trusted, cooked with, eaten with, turned on me. They beat me and only fed me their leftovers.”
Mary’s abusers found her work, but used fake bank accounts and IDs to divert her wages, so she never received a penny.
She was also forced into sexual exploitation.
“One day a man came to the house and I was told to make him happy,” she said. “That became my new way of living. I didn’t want the pain, so I just did whatever they wanted to stop them hurting me. When they told me to go and shower, I would know what was going to happen. A man would be coming.”
In order to make more money from Mary her captors took her to the bank to open fake accounts. But to her relief, she was stopped and arrested.
“I was so happy the police were coming,” she said.
But despite telling them her real name and drawing a map to where she was being held, they didn’t believe her.
“I was disappointed they let me go,” she said. “They thought I was an accomplice, that I was just a scumbag and faking the story.”
Mary was then taken to another town, where the abuse became so bad, she tried to take her own life.
“I felt like there was no way out of it except dying,” she said.
The suicide attempt failed, and the stress of the abuse took its toll on Mary’s body. She developed a serious skin condition which her captors worried they would catch. They took her to hospital, and it was there that Mary made her escape.
“I was walking down a corridor, but when I looked back, the two men who were always with me, weren’t there. I started running.”
Mary traveled back to Manchester, but with no money, documents or friends, found herself sleeping rough at Piccadilly train station. After four days, a Nigerian man asked if she was ok.
“I started crying,” said Mary. “I was just so exhausted and cold. He could have been anyone but I went with him.”
The man took her home to live with him and his daughters.
“I kept expecting them to beat me,” said Mary. “But they treated me like family.”
Mary began to recover, and after a few years was encouraged by her new family to try dating, and found love with a new man. But when the couple applied for a marriage licence, she was arrested.
“Apparently I was supposed to have answered bail for trying to open that bank account all those years earlier,” said Mary. “I had had no idea obviously.”
Mary was put in prison for six months where she suffered with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and worried her abusers would find her again.
“I told my solicitor my story and she got in touch with the Home Office. They identified me as a victim of slavery and referred me to Causeway.”
Mary’s Causeway case workers helped her access medical care and counselling, accompanied her to outreach centres, and encouraged her to study again.
Mary also found work through the Bright Future programme which helps survivors of modern slavery back into steady employment.
“I’ve had a long dark story,” she said. “But one day I hope I can become a social worker so I can help other people.”
Please support survivors of modern slavery this Christmas.
To donate £3, text GIFT23 to 70331
To donate £5, text GIFT23 to 70970
To donate £10, text GIFT23 to 70191