‘Sarah’ sent this harrowing and powerful piece about her experiences in prostitution through our Share Your Story page. This provides a space for women to tell of their experiences of the sex trade in their own words.

My number is eight.

Gagged and bound, I’m led down the steps into the basement. A group of men stand there and my legs begin to buckle beneath me. Surely, I’m not to be offered up to all of them? I’m horrified and afraid. But the question has already been answered in my mind and I know that my life will be changed forever.

I’m already struggling and crying out as he takes me to the mattress on the floor. Steve removes the gag and unties my wrists. I could try and run but I know I can’t.

“You don’t have to do this I will do whatever you want!” I scream in desperation at him. But the first man is already pulling down my trousers and I’m kicking, trying to stop him but the others hold me down.

“You got a real fighter here,” he says. “She will calm down eventually, you’ll see.”

I don’t want this to happen. I want to go home. And for the first time I want my mother. I cry out pleading with him but he’s already on top of me, my knickers torn off and discarded like a rag. I try to pull away but they are too powerful. I’m hoping Steve will tell them to stop but he’s just standing there watching with great interest.

The third. Then the fourth. I wonder how long this will go on for. My throat is dry from screaming. I’m still fighting with every ounce of strength I have in me, hoping they will stop.

I’m sore. The brutal thrusts feel like they will tear me apart. My knees are red raw. They pull me around like a doll. My mind slips away, trying to find some nice memory to cling to but its blank.

When the fourth stops, I take a moment to gather myself but then the fifth comes and flips me onto my stomach. “God no not in there,” I scream as he forces himself into my anus. The pain sears through me like a hot poker but I still fight as best I can. And Steve still stands and watches.

Number six and seven come together and I’m beginning to lose all hope. I know I cannot stop them. My screams have died down to sobbing. I want it to end.

“Why are you doing this to me? Please stop, you’re hurting me.” I’m sobbing, my chest so tight I can’t breathe, only take a shallow breath. But as the next approaches I stop. My voice is strangled, not even a whisper, but inside I’m screaming so loud the whole street would hear.

There is silence. I lay there while he thrusts into me. Not a sound from my lips. My body like a piece of meat. I have lost all ability to fight them and I give my body to them.

I am paralyzed there in that room and darkness comes over me tying me in a knot and there is no humanity to be found.

When he finished, the men headed upstairs chatting and joking. Steve plants a kiss on my forehead. “Good girl, now that wasn’t that bad was it?” And he smiles and walks upstairs. I hear the key turn in the lock and all there is, is the dark.

Down in that cellar a girl had been born full of pure rage and anger, continually tormented and too dangerous to be let out. She wanted to wreak havoc everywhere and cause destruction and ultimately her own death. She was number eight.

Walk-ups

I have been sent to a walk-up, after yet another huge fight leading to me hitting him in the jaw with my shoe. You see, I had started to express my pain and anger towards him and was lashing out more often. I wasn’t afraid to hit back as I knew he would hurt me anyway.

He had broken two of my fingers, fractured a rib and broken my arm. I have probably had concussion several times. I was bruised and battered on my chest, sides and legs, my upper arms and throat showing the distant signs of his hand prints. My wrists were often red raw from being bound. I was swollen and sore, even bleeding, from brute force or foreign objects. My back and buttocks bore the marks of frequent lashings with a belt or telephone cable, but I kept coming back for more. I loved him, needed him, like I thought I would die without him! More likely I was going to die because of him.

I was addicted to cocaine and drank heavily and he was self-medicating me with Valium. After another coke-fueled night, I had taken offense at his accusations over me screwing other men to make my own money. I hit him hard in the face with the heel of my shoe. And now here I am stuck in a walk-up for a week and I don’t think I will survive it.

I sit on the end of the bed in this dingy room, my maid waiting for the knock on the door of a client that will be my tenth and it’s only 8pm. I have a small bathroom to clean myself between clients and that’s all. They are the dregs of society and have no care for you at all, fucking you in every hole their putrid cum seeping from every orifice their grubby hands touching your bare flesh.

I lie there wishing to die. How can I endure this? The breath on my face as they heavy breathe on me. I’m suffocated. The stench of sex un-washable from my body. I cry to myself and they don’t even notice – just leave their cash and go.

After a while you feel that you’re not even human anymore, just a machine having sex with people. I really believe I could actually die from it.

I was in an eternal hell. He was punishing me for sure and I want to go back home to him because that’s better than where I am now.

Share your story

If you’ve been in the sex trade, or have been affected by it in other less direct ways, and would like to share your story anonymously, please see our Share Your Story page.