A woman who was kidnapped as a teenager and was about to be sold for her virginity and organs has shared her brave story of escaping her tortured hell and how she fled the dangerous gang
A brave woman has opened up about her horrific kidnapping by a brutal gang who plotted to sell her virginity and organs – and how she managed to escape the terror.
Lurata Lyon has told how her virginity was sold to a sick overseas bidder and she was regularly held at gunpoint as she was forced to watch other girls being raped so she knew “how to please a man”.
Now 45, Lurata’s twisted horror story started when she fled her hometown of Veliki Trnovac, Serbia, at just 17 to escape extreme violence in Yugoslavia during the 90s. After an ethnic cleansing murder squad invaded her village, she trekked across mountains to Kosovo in the hope of finding the Red Cross, whom she hoped could help her.
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But when she was rescued by two US soldiers, it was far from safe when a local translator tipped off a “crazed, vigilante” human trafficking gang who then kidnapped the teen as she went to the local newsstand to buy a magazine to keep her ‘occupied’.
A bag was put over her head and she was taken to their hideout where the ‘boss’ encouraged them to rape her – until she told them she was a virgin – leading the kidnappers to claim they had “struck gold”.
She told The Sun: “I remember them saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve sold you to the highest bidder’. And, ‘Give up. You’re never going to survive this. Once he’s done with you, we’ll put you in prostitution and then we’ll sell your organs.’ They took pleasure from my fear and having looked into human trafficking gangs they were telling the truth, they meant every single word.”
Lurata recalled how there was a gun “constantly” to her head or pointed at her as she was forced to watch unconscious women being raped before she was taken to be “shipped out” and “disappear”.
While being driven toward the Albanian border with a gun pressed to her ribs, Lurata was warned if she raised the alarm they would “shoot everyone”. When they arrived, the border was shut, so the gang took her back to one of their houses, while the boss made a sickening offer that would spare her from being trafficked.
“He was always hitting on me. Then he said, ‘If you give yourself to me and become my lover all of this will go away.’ But by that point, I was scared but willing to die. I’d had enough and I refused.” He was so fed up with her he told his gang to do “whatever you want” to her and “get rid of her”.
As she prepared to die, she begged her captor to “do this kindly” – to which he agreed and he then went to the toilet. She recalled the moment she suddenly heard a voice in her head that told her “turn around” and behind on a table was a gun and a ring of keys. She managed to unlock the first wooden door but struggled to open the metal security bars before sprinting down the stairs.
“It was like a movie, I can’t describe how frantically I was running. I was missing steps. I flew down them. But when I reached street level, I could feel him right behind me. Bang. He punched me in the face. It was so hard that I flew across the street. On the floor, I spotted a van nearby and started screaming for help.”
Lurata was found by a UN police officer. After a gunfight between her captor and the police, she was taken in for a police interview. With nowhere else to go afterwards, she returned to her hometown, where her parents warned her that things had “gotten so much worse”.
She was then captured again by more “crazed vigilantes” in the town who pretended to be from the national army, who then beat her. She spent six months inside an abandoned “dungeon” where she was abused daily and claimed she just wanted to die.
However a miracle happened when her father, a local doctor, managed to track her down and bribe the guards to let her return home for 24 hours to say goodbye. Yet he had a different plan. Lurata hid inside a truck that evening and was smuggled out of the country. She arrived in the UK and claimed political asylum.
She then became a British citizen in 2005 and her parents survived too. Lurata, who later wrote her memoir Unbroken: Surviving Human Trafficking, has said she’s “forever grateful” to the British people. She said she was most proud of “finding a way to remain kind” in spite of her experiences, pointing out: “Trauma and cruelty can turn people into monsters.”
“My trauma will always exist; it’s something you can’t ever forget but I’m happy, grateful and lucky to have survived and am proud of everything that I have achieved.”
Lurata is now a motivational speaker and a public speaking and presentation coach in the UK.
Rebecka Mischke
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