Rebekah Lisgarten: 'How one book set me on a path to tackling modern slavery'

Yorkshire Post

Rebekah Lisgarten is the CEO at Stop the Traffik, a global movement working to fight the global sale of people.  She has featured in a new video series launched to highlight the global epidemic of modern slavery.  Credit: Anti-Slavery Collective.

Transcript

00:00When I realised this is a real person I'd really read the book with a framing of thinking it must

00:05be fiction and the worse the book got the more I was like this cannot have happened to somebody.

00:20Hi I'm Rebecca Lizgarten, the CEO of Stop the Traffic, a human trafficking prevention charity.

00:25So I was 15, I was in a supermarket with my mum, I'd gone off to the book aisle and found a book

00:30that I could read, found one it was called Slave Girl by Sarah Forsyth and I read it pretty much

00:36in that weekend which is quite a challenge for me I'm dyslexic so I can't really read that quickly

00:41but it was a, I couldn't put it down once I'd started it. I was completely hooked on wanting

00:46to know, I wanted to know she was okay, I had that a real sense of oh my gosh are you like

00:51going to get out of this and I think because I had that frame of thinking it was fiction I felt

00:55nervous through the book that she wasn't going to make it. Obviously knowing that she's actually

00:59written the book I probably could have known that wasn't going to happen and I felt like a

01:03connection to her. I think that happens when someone's a really great writer but I felt

01:07that she was telling me her story and because she was trafficked when she was 17 I was 15

01:14there were some similarities in some of the stuff she'd experienced before she was trafficked so

01:18as I was reading I'm thinking oh my gosh like this is something I would do and then when she

01:23gets to what she thought was going to be a nanny job in Holland her passport's taken away from her

01:28gun to her head and she's held in sexual exploitation for around seven years then it's

01:33her story of how she ultimately escaped but when I was reading I was thinking surely you just go

01:38tell the police surely you just run away but they would send in fake people pretending to be police

01:43officers and she was assaulted by people that she thought might help her and so you're kind of

01:49on the journey with the person writing the book of understanding why she can't just run away and

01:54then it's about her life afterwards and some of the complexities I guess just really terrible

01:58things happen to somebody and then at the end of the book it talks about her life now. I was

02:04completely flawed when I realised this is a real person I'd really read the book with a framing of

02:10thinking it must be fiction and the worse the book got the more I was like this cannot have

02:15happened to somebody and so then when you read about her life now and who who she is and some

02:21more details of her as a as a mother and as a sister and as something I could really resonate

02:28with I was just I was so shocked I'm really upset by it I hadn't really been exposed to something

02:34like that hadn't heard about human trafficking and I remember going and speaking to my mum

02:38afterwards and like asking her about it she kind of said like she like loosely heard about it on

02:43the news but she didn't really think it happened here and it was like a terrible thing that

02:49happened but she didn't really know anything about it and I spoke to a lot of people in my life at

02:54the time and everyone had a pretty similar answer for me oh gosh yeah it's terrible but no one could

02:58tell me where why or how that this was happening and I couldn't at the beginning get a sense of is

03:05this just this one crazy thing that's happened to this really unfortunate person or is like how

03:12big is this problem and it was a bit of like a thread that I started I guess to pull out and

03:16the internet wasn't what it is now so my main source of information was asking people friends

03:22family and kind of community to try to understand it more and I remember the relief I felt when I

03:28got to the last chapter I was genuinely nervous of like I need her to be okay and I think we

03:33sometimes put that onto somebody like we join in their story and we're like we need you to be okay

03:38and that was kind of what she experienced the world needed her they couldn't cope with what

03:43happened to her let alone help her and obviously it's not a nirvana that you suddenly reach and

03:48suddenly you're okay but it does give you hope at the end of the book that she'd managed through

03:55her own strength and and her own resilience to get to a different place and build some

04:00stability and safety I think people feel safer in black and white grayness is hard for for human

04:06psychology and I'd felt in my life had been quite a lot of grayness and so it definitely resonated

04:14for me of the journey after trauma is not straightforward and I think it doesn't always

04:18come from a bad place and people want it to be straightforward it's because it's what feels safe

04:22for us but it was hugely complex and the system isn't built to support victims and survivors of

04:29modern slavery and so if you fall out of the black and white neat boxes there are gaps in the

04:35systems that are meant to support you and it doesn't mean there's not brilliant people within

04:39those systems fighting for something to be different I had like an obsession of trafficking

04:43like it it changed something undramatically like in my head and my heart that had never happened

04:50for me supporting people out of essentially red light districts that only have children in them

04:56in Cambodia was definitely a change moment for me of really solidifying this is what I'm going

05:02to do with my life and that sense has never left me of when I read the book to when I was there

05:07I cannot believe this happens to people and I want to spend my time doing whatever I can to change that

05:25you

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