“If it can happen to me, imagine how easily it can happen to somebody who never left their hometown.”
In the mid 2000s, Caroline Pugh-Roberts was working in strip clubs, locked in motel rooms and forced into prostitution.
For eight years, she spent her nights on the streets of London and drifting between seedy apartments. She was coerced by a man she once trusted into selling her body for sex.
Pugh-Roberts was bound by what she calls invisible chains to a living nightmare.
She had become a victim of sex trafficking.
Before this, Pugh-Roberts was a skydiving instructor, had traveled the world extensively and spoke five languages.
“If it can happen to me, imagine how easily it can happen to somebody who never left their hometown,” she says.
At the age of 35, Pugh-Roberts lost her husband, mother, and two best friends all within a six-month period. Looking back, Pugh-Roberts says she was struggling with grief and undiagnosed clinical depression. It was during this time that her best friend’s husband introduced her to a man.
He would later become her trafficker.
“He said to me that he would take care of me. That it would all be alright, and we could build a new life together,” says Pugh-Roberts. “Because I was so vulnerable, I went for it.”
Pugh-Roberts fell into what she now calls the “Romeo pimp” scenario. The man began taking care of her finances and started buying her gifts.
Wendy Goldsmith, an advocate counsellor for human trafficking at the London Abused Women’s centre, says that a trafficker will often present themselves as the young woman's boyfriend. After that, the trafficker will use any information the woman shared with them to make threats of violence or exposure.
“I don’t think any of us can have any idea of the total control that these pimps have over the lives of these individual women,” says Kim Ashby, a sociology professor at Western University.
Pugh-Roberts explains the “Lover Boy / Romeo Pimp” scenario.
Pugh-Roberts says that the “Romeo Pimp” treatment went on for about six months. After that, the police came by and changed the locks because of the unpaid rent.
“At that point [her trafficker] said to me that it was my time to take care of the family and that I would be earning my money at the strip bars,” she explains.
Pugh-Roberts says she wasn’t as shocked as she should have been at his request. From the ages of 14 to 18, she had been sexually assaulted on multiple occasions.
“I had already learnt that my body wasn't mine and that it was for the taking,” she says.
“I had already learned that my body wasn’t mine and that it was for the taking.”
At the strip clubs, Pugh-Roberts would work a minimum of four hours on the floor along with three stage shows. She says that a lot of women working at strip clubs are being trafficked and forced to fill a financial quota.
“I will solicit you and tell you that you are the greatest guy I've ever met. I will tell you whatever the fuck I think you need to hear so I get my quota,” says Pugh-Roberts.
Working in the strip clubs escalated into being trafficked in hotels and motels. As the abuse and trafficking continued, she became completely isolated from her friends and family.
Caroline describes what it is like being trafficked in hotels and motels.
Pugh-Roberts has difficulty remembering exactly what happened to her during the years she was trafficked.
“I’d lose weeks,” she says. “I’d come to and a week had gone by and I had no idea where it went.”
For many victims of sex trafficking, Pugh-Roberts says dissociative identity disorder is a common mental illness developed as a coping mechanism. “That’s just how they survive,” she says.
Recent research suggests the development of dissociative identity disorders may be attributed to the social learning and expectations trafficked persons experience. The emotional manipulation and physical threats endured by victims often results in the need to dissociate from reality.
“There were invisible chains, many of them.”
Caroline discusses her invisible chains.
After years of abuse, Pugh-Roberts tried to tell her trafficker that she didn’t want to do be prostituted anymore. “That's when he broke all of my toes so I couldn't walk,” she says.
Eventually her trafficker’s seven-year-old son moved in with them. During this time, Pugh-Roberts would be left alone for longer periods of time because her trafficker knew she wouldn't leave the child alone. “I’d get up in the morning, hobble, get this kid off to school, go into one of the bedrooms and lie down and work,” she says.
At night, Pugh-Roberts would have to sleep on the floor so that she was within eyesight of her trafficker. “One night he woke me up and he handed me a crack pipe and he said, ‘if you don't use this, I'm never going to let you sleep again’,” she says.
All she had left was the clothes on her back and an addiction, she recalled.
Caroline discusses the journey to escape her trafficker.
After eight years of being trafficked, Pugh-Roberts got the courage to escape to a women’s shelter. However, her trafficker followed her there and caused a scene outside, yelling and throwing belongings.
“They looked at me and said, ‘Well you can no longer stay as your presence here endangers all the other women,’” she says.
Pugh-Roberts was moved to another shelter, but two days into her stay she was admitted to the hospital for health issues. Since she was away for more than two nights, the shelter evicted her.
Goldsmith said a lot of women aren’t ready to exit and they’re afraid of any kind of authority.
“They don't have family support and relationships, so they don't feel like they have anywhere to turn to except to these guys,” says Goldsmith.
In Pugh-Roberts case, after being discharged from the hospital she had nowhere to go and no one to call other than her trafficker. “Now he's pissed off and he says to me (that) I'm not allowed to have a roof anymore and I have to work and live out of the car,” she says.
Some days she says she got lucky and he would park in a parking lot where there was a port-a-potty. But if there wasn’t one, she says she was “pissing in the street.”
“They don’t feel like they have anywhere to turn to except to these guys.”
As things got worse, she didn’t know where to turn to. “I didn't know about social services, I didn't need to know about them,” says Pugh-Roberts.
After some time, the shelter agreed to take her back. However, the limited accommodation period at shelters proves challenging for women looking to escape. “How do you get your life back together in 42 days when you haven't slept in over a year and have no identification, no clothes and an addiction? It's not possible,” she says.
Pugh-Roberts says she was fortunate to stay at the shelter for four months. She was able to get into London Housing and officially separate herself from her trafficker.
“This is two years of me trying to get away from him,” she says. “I got housing, and the day they gave me my keys I wept so hard they had to come around from a desk and physically hold me up.”