‘I was sold into sex slavery at 18’
WE SPOKE TO TWO OF THE WOMEN EMBRACE DIGNITY HAS HELPED.
‘Irecall growing up as a happy-golucky kid in Woodstock,’ says Grizelda Grootboom. She lived in an old house in the Cape Town suburb with her grandparents and father until 1988, when she was eight years old. ‘In the space of a year I lost my grandfather and my grandmother, then we were forced out of our home by the Apartheid government.’ With nowhere to go, she and her father lived on the streets. ‘He would leave me at shelters for weeks at a time, but the last time he just never came back.’ Grizelda heard that the mother who had abandoned her as a baby was living in Khayelitsha with her new family. ‘I think I got on the train eight times before deciding to get off and see her.’
Her mother told everyone that Grizelda was her niece, and instead of sending her to school, she had to clean the house and sleep on the floor. Two weeks into living with her mother, Grizelda was attacked. ‘Two boys forced me into a shack at knifepoint, where they took turns raping me the entire day.’ It was dark when they let her return home – when she got there, her mother beat her for being late. Looking back now, Grizelda realises her mom was an alcoholic and dealing with her own pain. ‘I left the next
morning as soon as she went to work.'
Once again Grizelda found herself moving between shelters and the streets. During that time, she started taking drugs and joined a gang. As a result, the shelter told her she had to leave once she turned 18. Grizelda tried to get her life on track by going back to school. ‘My friend Ntombi was moving to Joburg, and she told me to come with her. I thought this was my ticket off the streets.' Grizelda went home with Ntombi; but instead of taking her home, her friend delivered her to the house of sex traffickers. Grizelda was tied up and drugged, and for the next two weeks subjected to brutal rape from ‘client' after ‘client' until she was thrown out in the middle of the night.
She didn't know where she was, she had no money and could think of only one thing: her next fix. After being approached by a pimp, she was introduced to street prostitution. When she was 26, her pimp swapped her, and she went to live with a madam in PE. It was here that she fell pregnant. After being forced to have an abortion, she was expected to go straight back to work, but Grizelda felt too ill to continue. ‘When I refused, I was beaten and dropped off back in Johannesburg.'
A month later she woke up in hospital. Thanks to a few good Samaritans, she was able to go to rehab, but once she was on the outside again, she fell back in with pimps, this time drug-running and doing odd jobs at local churches. At one church, the pastor approached her to drive drugs to Cape Town. She took the money, made the drop and went back to her mother; she had nowhere else to turn.
A few years later, Grizelda attended a human trafficking workshop where she was introduced to Embrace Dignity. ‘When I met Nozizwe, I wasn't sure I had any dignity left. She asked what they could do to make me whole again and I told her that I wanted to write my story.' In 2016, she published the story of her journey out of prostitution, Exit!
Today, Grizelda is rebuilding her relationship with her mother, is an activist against human trafficking, and works at Embrace Dignity. She's also working towards getting her matric – she wants to become a human rights lawyer and eventually, a judge. ‘Because of Embrace Dignity, I'm dreaming and hoping,' she says.