Kim Purcell

Books:

• Trafficked

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Trafficked is the story of Hannah, a girl from Moldova brought to Los Angeles as a nanny but unbeknownst to her, she’s been sold to the family, is kept under lock and key, threatened and abused. While this novel reflects the features in many newspapers written about trafficked girls, this takes a very focused and personal approach to the story as you experience it through Hannah’s eyes as she reconciles what’s she’s been told with what she’s experiencing as she’staken advantage of, and later, as she finds the strength to get herself out of the situation. While this a heart-wreching story, it is also ultimately one of survival and hope.

I’d like to tell you about my first couple hours in Moldova because it will show you how much my journey into and out of Moldova informed my debut novel, TRAFFICKED, about a girl who comes from Moldova to America to be a nanny and ends up a modern-day domestic slave.

It was three in the morning. The bus squealed to a stop at the side of the road in Chisinau. We were a couple hours late due to a very long wait at the Romanian border. I looked out the window, confused. We weren’t even at a bus terminal. The driver’s assistant yelled in Russian and then in Moldovan, words I couldn’t understand. Everyone stood up, gathered their things and started to get off. I asked the Moldovan girl beside me if this was the only stop and she said yes.

The girl and I had talked along the drive and during a very long wait at the border. Part of this conversation is in TRAFFICKED. In the book, she’s Ina, one of the traffickers whom Hannah thinks is just a friend. The girl ran her hands over the front of her fur vest and asked if I had someone coming for me. I told her I did, that I didn’t need any help. Something about her seemed sketchy and I always try to honor that, even if I can’t pinpoint what it is that I don’t trust.

I followed her off the bus. Outside, large men in black overcoats swarmed around us. They didn’t look like drivers. Nor did they look like nice Moldovan men coming to pick up their wives. The Moldovans walked past them into waiting cars or walked over to a nearby bus stop to wait. I also attempted to ignore the men as I got off, but they all started yelling at me, telling me in broken English they could help me. I’d experienced this in many countries, but these men were bigger, pushier and more intimidating than what I’d experienced before. Some of the men just stood there, arms crossed over their broad chests, glowering at me. I thought, I’m here to research trafficked girls, not become one of them.

I could have taken a plane right into Moldova, but it was expensive and my girl wouldn’t have travelled that way to get out of Moldova, so I needed to experience things as she may have experienced them. There is a fine line, however, about how much I wanted to experience.

My cousin had told me to find a phone and call her when I got in. I had Moldovan lei, but I didn’t see a phone and I wasn’t about to get her to walk through the streets at this hour anyway. I’d expected to arrive at a regular bus terminal with security guards around and phones on the wall in a waiting room. This might sound naïve, but I’d travelled all over the world at that point. I’d hitchhiked through Central America. I’d travelled through India. I’d lived in Mexico and Korea for a year each. When I’d talked to my cousin, I wasn’t worried at all about my travel plans, despite what had happened to her just a week before I arrived.

My cousin had been walking through a field with long grass next to her apartment building, right in the middle of the city. Someone was lying in wait, in the grass next to the path. He pulled her down into the grass, smashed her in the head, tore off her backpack and her jacket. Somehow, she got away. We think she wiggled out of her jacket because she arrived at a nearby store without it. She had a serious head injury and couldn’t remember much. They called an ambulance. Her face was still bruised and swollen.

“Ina” tossed back her long glamorous brown hair and asked me again, “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?” I smiled and said I’d be fine. She wrote down her number and said she’d love to show me around. I wondered if I was making a mistake. But then an enormous man in a long black jacket came up. He looked like a Russian mafia man straight out of the movies. He also made it into the book.

I looked around. If I ran about a quarter of a mile, I could get to a hotel. The lights were on, perhaps someone would be at the desk. I waited until the girl had left with the man in his black Mercedes, and then I grabbed my backpack and sprinted toward the hotel. I made it to the door and burst into a small room with old wallpaper that served as a lobby. Nobody was there. I rang the bell. No one came. I glanced at the door, worried one of those men might have followed me.

Finally, an old tired woman opened a door behind the desk and asked me what I wanted in broken English. She gave me a weary look and sold me a room for the equivalent of twenty dollars. I followed her up some creaky stairs to a room I had to lock from the inside with this ancient-looking key. I didn’t have a bathroom – it was down the hall. Needless to say, I didn’t go. The only furniture in the room was a futon-type sofa that folded into a bed. She gave me a pillow and a blanket, and left me there. I didn’t sleep, just stayed in the room and wrote in a journal until the light came up and people started to move about outside. I left the hotel and called my cousin from a payphone. The phone had this odd double ring and when she answered, I couldn’t have felt more relieved.

For the next two weeks of my trip, the kindest Moldovans, mostly women, took me into the villages, their homes and their classrooms, and introduced me to girls like Hannah. But those first few terrified hours were invaluable in the writing of this book and it wouldn’t trade them for anything.

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