Phone call saved woman’s life

WHEN SIPTU trade union representative Anton McCabe received the voice mail on his phone one Sunday morning he could tell the caller had a few drinks onboard.

But even though the words were a bit slurred there was no doubt as to the seriousness of what the young man was trying to tell him.

Mr McCabe was well known in the local area as having a special interest in migrant issues and it appeared that it was that interest which sparked the young man to make that call to him.

“He said in the message that he wanted to report something to me,” said Mr McCabe. “He told me he had got my number from a friend. He said on the night before he had been having a few drinks in a nightclub up the country when this big imposing guy, who he said had approached him, offered him what he described as a ‘lady of the night’.”

The young man said he was directed to a house outside the town and he went there.

“What he said in the phone message was ‘I am 19 and was offered a ride’. It was €80 for full sex. He went into the room in the house and there was a young girl sitting on the bed, crying. All he could picture sitting on the bed was one of his twin sisters.”

The sight rapidly sobered the man and he spent the next 15 minutes sitting with the distraught young woman talking to her and trying to console her.

“She told him if he left straight away, she would be beaten,” said Mr McCabe. “So he gave her the €80 before he left. He said it terrified him.”

With no way to contact the young man – his number did not show up with the message – Mr McCabe was powerless to act.

However, three days later the young man rang again and this time Mr McCabe was able to find out where the girl was.

“Through a friend of a man who was active in the particular community we were able to pinpoint the house and find the girl,” he said. “I went to the house that morning with another Lithuanian girl at about 10.30am and got her out. The other girl was able to explain who I was.”

Once she trusted him, Mr McCabe was able to elicit further information about who she was and how she had ended up there.

“She was able to tell me that she was 19 years old,” he said. “I brought her up to a friend of mine in Dublin and there she told me that she had expected to be there until she was 25. I asked her what she meant and she said that in Lithuania girls were in these houses until they were 25 and then they were put out onto the street and a younger girl would be brought into replace them.

“She said this guy that had brought her over first met her when she was 14-15 years old and she thought they were boyfriend and girlfriend. He then left to come over here to work before returning to Lithuania three years later and they began a physical relationship. He told her he could bring her to Ireland and she could get a better life. She came over on a Sunday and by Tuesday she had been brought to Dublin to meet a man who turned out to be a pimp, the big Lithuanian who lived in the town where she would eventually end up.”

On the way to the town where she would end up working, the woman took out her passport and said she wanted to go home.

“She said he grabbed her passport and slapped her across the face telling her she would do what he told her to do,” said Mr McCabe. “Initially she was expected to ‘service’ men from the Lithuanian community and over time he decided he could expand his ‘business’. She said she kept count of the number of men and by the time I got her out of there she had seen 28.

“She said if I brought her to the gardaí, he would destroy her in her own village back in Lithuania and that she would be an outcast. With my work I had several contacts all over the country and she had told me she had been a trainee beautician so I got her a job in the south of the country. She has a better life now.”