JAKARTA: She sits calmly sipping her coffee as she details horrors of her life in Australia for two years. Salima wanted to study at an Australian university, but didn't have the finances to do so on her, instead asking her uncle in Perth to help her get to one of the universities down under. Instead, when she arrived in Australia, expecting to begin her coursework in the fall of 2009, her uncle's “friend” was at the airport to pick her up. She admitted that she was too excited to understand what was happening at the time, but the “friend” drove her to a building on the outskirts of the city, where she was forced to live and “work” for the next 18 months until she escaped. Her story is one of struggle to find a way out of the situation she had been thrown into, and one she says afflicts many women from Southeast Asia. “I am not alone in this problem. My story is similar to other women I met in Australia, in the same building where we were forced to have sex with men on a daily basis for what they said was the fee to go to school,” she told Bikyamasr.com in Jakarta, where she has lived for the past 6 months, and just started university courses. “That first day, I didn't think what was happening to me was really going on. They took me into the facility and two other men came and forced me to strip. I was in tears as they inspected my body and then showered me,” she begins of those first few days. The now 21-year-old woman said that the owners who ran the facility would take turns forcing her to have sex with them in what they told her “was to see if she could make it.” “I was a virgin when I arrived in Australia. Those months were the worst of my life. I lived in a small room where men would come at any time of the day for their pleasure,” she revealed. The owners of the facility would wake up the girls at any time of the day, force them to shower, put on make-up and “be ready.” Salima said it was the most degrading experience in her life and one she hopes to forget. She has been working with Indonesian women's rights groups to help the healing process, but she said that time will be the only way to heal what has happened to her. “I just hope that more women are not forced into this kind of thing. It is the worst thing a woman can have happen to them. I thought I was going to university and I was excited, but it turned out I had been sold into slavery,” she said, her blunt demeaning showing how her excitement at life has diminished. Despite her struggle, when she was able to escape her captors, she informed the Australian authorities, who she said were able to arrest those responsible for holding her and at least a dozen other girls. But she believes more needs to be done in Southeast Asia in order to avoid women being forced into sex slavery across the world. “I think that what we need are new measures and real development of our societies here so women do not get into situations like I found myself. If this can happen, I think it will be good for everyone,” she said. For her, university and helping other women has become her life. “I go to school and then I go to counseling where I have found I have a talent for helping other women and girls who have been forced to do this work,” she added.
