I have been a slave all my life. When I was 16, my family forced me to leave school and marry a man I did not love. I was his slave. When my husband realized that I could not get pregnant, he abused me badly. He humiliated me, beat me and raped me, putting the blame on me because I could not be pregnant, saying that I was doing it on purpose. That’s why I ran away. But in Libya I found myself back to slavery again. The woman who helped me to escape had promised me a job in a restaurant. But when I arrived in Libya I was sold to a man as a slave. I stayed there for a month. Then a Mali guy helped me to escape and after a while I managed to embark and go to Italy.
This testimony was gathered at the Pozzallo Hotspot on October 16th 2017