Documentary on One: Sex slave – A Survivor’s Story
In late 2010, the Medical Missionaries of Mary in Ireland invited a young Eastern European girl named Iris to Ireland to speak with students at DKIT (Dundalk Institute of Technology) and tell them her story. During her time in Ireland, the ‘Documentary on One’ was granted exclusive access to record with Iris.
In 2004 Iris was a student going through a troubled part of her life at home in Eastern Europe. Like many others, to her human trafficking was something that she came across from time to time through a news piece or newspaper article. The idea of being kidnapped during a job interview and forced to work as a prostitute was something she only saw in Hollywood movies. However, this was about to become her nightmare reality when she was betrayed by a friend and coaxed to a false interview, where her kidnappers pounced.
This documentary tells the story of how Iris was befriended and betrayed by a woman with whom she had shared intimate details of her life. Unbeknownst to Iris this woman was working for a criminal gang and when she met Iris at a vulnerable stage in her life she saw an opportunity. To her Iris was profit and with this in mind she built her trust before selling her into slavery.
For three days Iris was beaten and raped before being forced to take heroin and left in a darkened room. She vividly remembers her first clients coming to her and the reality that faced her hit her hard. Regularly forced to phone her mother and tell her lies so as not to arouse suspicion, Iris lived as a slave until the day she saw her chance to escape.
This documentary is Iris telling her story as her brother sits next to her, hearing the intimate details of her enforced prostitution for the first time. Iris bravely recalls how she was kidnapped and what daily life was then like, how she was moved from house to house, how she never had any contact with anyone else and how she eventually escaped and regained her freedom.
Produced by Brian Kenny
Sound Supervision by Anton Timoney
Production Supervision by Ronan Kelly
Saturday, 29 January, 6.05pm (Repeated Sunday, 7.02pm)