A Romanian who expected a "great future" in Ireland but endured a horrific ordeal talks to Kitty Holland. Maria Alexi (18) says she "fell in love" when she was 15 with a man who promised her "many things and a great future" in Ireland.
But within a few months of being brought into the country illegally, she found herself living in fear of the man who arranged for her to travel, being held captive and forced to have sex with men in flats in the city.
When she first came to Ireland in January 2001, she worked for a few months in a kebab shop run by a friend of this man as well as packing vegetables in a warehouse. Within months, however, the man who had helped her come to Ireland started bringing men home and telling her she had to have sex with them.
"They said 'he is the boss. If you don't perform sex he will kill you'. I think I had sex with maybe 200 men since I came here."
Last Tuesday afternoon, sitting on her single bed in a tiny, dingy bed-sit near the Phoenix Park, this diminutive, sallow-skinned girl with wide deep brown eyes, tells how she first met the man in her home town, Bistrita, in the Transylvania region of northern Romania.
He, she explains, is Romanian, aged about 30, and has residency here on the basis of having an Irish-born child. She says he is married to a Romanian, and has been living in Dublin with two children.
In Romania her parents did not get along. "My father hit my mother and she died and I was living with my grandmother."
Speaking though an interpreter, she says her financial situation there was not good; there could be days when she did not eat. Then she was out with a friend one evening and met the man, and she says she "believed his compliments".
"He told me I was beautiful, that I had a great body and said he could give me a great life in Ireland." He arranged that she travel by bus to Spain, where she was met by "his friend" who had arranged a false Italian passport and false Italian driving licence. She flew to Dublin where the man met her and brought her to another Romanian man's house.
"I was very happy working for a few months. He used to bring me out to clubs in the beginning. I had no Irish friends but I was happy.
"After a few months he come home and tell me I had to perform sex with some friends of his because we need money. I cried, I said 'I no want', but he said he was the boss." She was just 15.
"First I work with two men from Romania. It took about half an hour each. Then also men from Bulgaria and China." She could be forced to have sex with up to six men a night. It was a source of contention between her and the man that she refused to perform oral sex or take part in anal sex.
She said she would, in the first months, tell the men she didn't want to have sex with them but they told her he would kill her, and she believed them because he used to threaten her with a knife. Lifting her jumper she now reveals a long gashing scar extending from between her breasts and down her torso. "After he cut me I really believe he was capable of killing me."
Asked how often he would bring men back she says it would depend - "two or three days break, then he would bring more clients for another few days. They pay him - nothing for me."
One Romanian man, whom she was told last summer to accompany to a disco in Phibsboro and have sex with, gave her €100, but she gave it to the man. "He was waiting outside". At no point, she says, did she ever have money of her own. He bought her food and clothes. "He take the clothes back if he thought I looked too good in them."
Throughout her time here she says he "kept" her in a number of flats until settling on one in Portland Row some time last summer. She was moved again from there about a month ago.
He locked her in if he wasn't staying with her. Otherwise she would be in the company of another Romanian man, whose name she gives, and who was "running" another Romanian girl, Oana (20) who escaped, and, she thinks, went to England. This girl had a badly scarred face, having been beaten with a heavy ash-tray.
She thought of running away herself but with almost no English and threats from the man who had helped her come to Ireland that he would kill her if she did, she says she was too frightened.
Another girl, Yolanda (21), also from Romania, was similarly brought to Ireland by another man with promises of a great future. "But she is back in Romania now. She was deported."
In the flat in Portland Row she had good neighbours, who used to intervene when she was being beaten , telling him she was only a girl and to stop. They thought she worked as a stripper, says Maria.
Six months ago she became pregnant by the man. Though he insisted clients use condoms, he would not.
"He told me he didn't like having sex with the protection. He told me that if I was having a baby it wouldn't be a problem. When I become pregnant I was desperate. He brought me to a private clinic and ask for medication to make me lose the baby. He told the doctor I was too young to have a baby. The doctor refused."
The man told her he "didn't give a f..k" about the baby and started beating her, she says, "very badly, three or four times a week". He punched and kicked her in the stomach, as well as breaking her lips and mouth.
"Sometimes I would be unconscious after being beaten and he would throw water in my face to wake me up. I would have big pain in my stomach. Sometimes I cried so much at night I thought I would lose five kilos."
The last time he beat her, was about two weeks ago. She was six months pregnant. He called to the flat and let himself in. After talking to to her a bit he made to leave. However, he instead locked the door and turned to slap her to the floor.
"After I was down he took this towel on the bed and put it around his hand and started punching me very hard in the stomach. I was feeling I was wetting myself and I started crying and screaming. Blood was coming out down here," she says, pointing at her vagina. "I was all blood. He brought me to the toilet. I felt something coming out of my body. He pull the chain and he left me here," she says, gesturing to the floor. He told her if she went to gardaí he would "paralyse" her.
However, a neighbour called an ambulance and gardaí, and she was brought first to the Mater Hospital and then to the Rotunda.
She had lost the baby. She developed an infection in her uterus which required attention and she was kept in hospital for a few nights.
Until this point, smoking continuously, she seems almost disconnected from the horrors she reveals. But speaking of her lost pregnancy she gets tearful, and clearly finds it difficult to speak.
"I used to feel him move after I ate things," she says quietly, stroking her belly. "I wanted to have my child."
On Monday night she made a full statement to gardaí in Fitzgibbon Street, and she was taken into Garda protection yesterday.
