My Story

One day I was walking down the street at about 5 P.M., 15 days after my 15th birthday. At the time, I was in Mexico. A man rushed down the street, looked at me frantically, and said, “You’re in danger. Please come with me.” I followed him and eventually we got into his car. We drove for a while. When I asked him what was the danger I was in, he said, “There are people following you.” Eventually, we arrived at a secluded ranch. We went inside and he told me to change into new clothes so that the people won’t recognize me. He led me into the basement and I went behind a set of foldable walls, where there were clothes that looked about my size. I stripped off my shirt and bra, and was about to put on a new shirt when he came around and picked me up. I pounded on him and yelled, with my bare chest against his shoulder, but he was too strong. I was thrown onto a bed with him sitting on me, and he shackled my individual hands to the frame on both sides, along with my feet. He pulled off my pants, leaving me only with my panties, and from there on, for the countless days, he would torture me with blades. He would lay on me, caressing my bare skin with knives, while I could only whimper an groan. Every day, he would stab or slice me, often in my breasts, or my stomach. He had apparently read a book on female anatomy, for he never fatally wounded or killed me while causing me pain. I wasn’t the only one. Sometimes I heard others. Finally, a good 3 months later, he unlocked me from my shackles and stabbed me, harder than he ever had before, with a machete one feet long. He did it again and again, repeatedly in the centre of my stomach, until I vomited blood and fell to the floor, unconscious. He assumed I was dead, because he drove me out into the middle of the desert and left me there. It was my luck that a hiking group found me and brought me to a hospital. The doctors were amazed that I had survived. To all intents and purposes, I should’ve died. I recovered 3 months later and went back to the US. They’ve never been able to find who did it to me. For the rest of my life, I’ll have scars. If I have children, I’ll never be able to feed them myself. This is my story.

– Celine