Sonia’s mother died of stomach cancer when she was 12 years old. For this reason, she remained under the care of her uncle, who forced her to work in a nightclub under the pretext of collecting money that the deceased “owed them for the expenses of her treatment.”
She started selling sweets in the bathroom of the place, then cleaning and was forced into prostitution.
“I lived well with my uncle and his girlfriend for regarding three years, although he was an alcoholic, he respected me. Then, his girlfriend got pregnant with her first child, the expenses started to be more and more. Due to the same pressure, his alcoholism became more complicated and he stopped going to work in salons, he began to send me to sell candy, cigarettes, sanitary towels and paper to the bathrooms, ”he tells EL UNIVERSAL.
Sonia stopped going to school because she went from working weekends in party halls to going to pulquerías and bars from Tuesday to Friday, forced by her uncles. “My uncle would visit the pulcata, he would fill his mouth saying that I was her daughter and one day he sold me to a man who offered him a lot of money for my virginity.
“He treated me like his little gold medal when he realized that he might take advantage of me that way, and every time he took me to be raped he reminded me that my mother owed them a lot of money for medicine and time. who was hospitalized, and me for having attended school”, he comments.
Expenses to support the new member of the family increased as the child grew older. His aunt was forced to work as a candy vendor in party halls. Sonia was neglected, under the tutelage of her uncle, to whom her alcoholism was increasingly complicated.
“There were nights when my uncle forced me to be with more than three men who paid him 100, 200 pesos. I lived a miserable life and wanted to kill myself in an effort to ask my mom why she had left me alone”.
Sonia, who is 35 years old today, was able to escape from her uncle’s house when a neighbor found out what they were doing to her and asked the police for help. “The patrol picked me up, but they ended up returning me to my aunt because there was no one to take care of me. A week later I went out on the street, I lived there, I fell into drugs and prostitution for several years, until some girls came to invite us to the children’s home”.
Within the foundation, they provided her with medical and psychological help and a sewing course that opened the doors to the opportunity to reintegrate into the workforce. He started fixing clothes to order until he met his current partner who is unaware of his “painful past”.
On why she never wanted to denounce her family or tell her husband, she replies that she is ashamed. “I don’t trust the police. No one has ever threatened me or laid a hand on me to force me to prostitute myself, so I feel it’s my fault and I think I had to do something at that time.
“I really like watching the news. Over there I know that what they did to me has a name and is punishable by law, but you get a very strong twenty when you say: ‘I am a victim, what they did to me is called human trafficking and who knows how many others are silent’ ” .
Sonia has two children with her partner: a newborn boy and a girl who is in the second grade of primary school.
