Dear ones, we recently shared the feature film "I’m his" by Thomas Durchschlag (still in the media library until 24.12.) on our Facebook page, with the addition that you can hardly stand this film as a parent of a daughter.
The film is about the drama of a girl who falls for a so-called "loverboy". After we shared the link, Carola, who actually has a different name, got in touch with us. We had a long phone call. This conversation resulted in the following text, which was also approved by her daughter…
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When Carola realised that something was wrong with her daughter, she had already moved out. She always had a good relationship with her second child. The two of them talk on the phone a lot after she moves out and see each other often because they still live in the same city. She is 19 and ready for life.
But Carola is worried. She senses that her daughter – let’s call her Sabrina – has something on her mind. She is more silent than usual and is constantly distracted by messages on her mobile phone. There’s something wrong here, her mum suspects. And she is proved right…
Horny, dependent: In the clutches of a "loverboy"
Because what she doesn’t realise at the time is that Sabrina has fallen into the clutches of a loverboy. A guy in his early or mid-20s who looks like a top model. A beau who promises her heaven on earth. And who at some point says he urgently needs 10,000 euros.
It’s the little things that worry her mum. When Sabrina is with her, she pulls her legs towards her on the sofa as if she were in a foetal position.
Carola keeps telling her: Sabrina, I’m here for you. If you need help, just let me know. Until Sabrina bursts into tears at some point. Thank you, mum. Thank you. But I’m afraid I can’t tell you what’s wrong yet.
What mum doesn’t know: Her child is hooking up
Ten clients served her daughter in the early days. Per day! Later it’s three or four, depending on the order situation.
Sabrina is addicted to her lover boy, who keeps giving her different names and dates of birth. When she says she wants out, he beats her and she has bruises all over her body. He needs the money. The money she gives him!
He deliberately gets Sabrina into debt. With mobile phone contracts or expensive orders that she „has to pay off“. He threatens to harm her younger siblings or her mother if she says anything.
She loves him. She can’t do without him.
Carola’s daughter changes, no longer smiles
When Sabrina visits her mum, she goes to the bathroom first. She feels dirty. At one point, she can barely get out of the shower without help. Her body suffers too.
The clients tend to be well-heeled men. At some point, she becomes more selective and soon no longer lets just anyone into her small flat. Because that’s where it happens. She wants to get out of there. But she can’t do it.
I’m here for you. When Carola finally finds out from Sabrina what’s going on, her world collapses. Sabrina claims to be doing it all voluntarily. For him. Out of love. It was just sex and easy money. She is so in love. She was afraid that Carola would reject her now. I’m here for you.Mum puts on a good face
Your mum is almost sick to her stomach when she thinks about him. The guy who had celebrated Christmas with them. She couldn’t know what he was doing to her daughter. She had to keep a straight face, she couldn’t say anything, even though she knew. It would have been dangerous. For her. For her daughter.
He acted well, says Carola, was polite in his speech and even showed patience with Sabrina’s siblings. She had to watch as her daughter adored him, how she gave him perfume that she couldn’t actually afford… snogging, flirting– the whole programme. „You can’t imagine how hard that was,“ she says.
In the meantime, she has an explanation for Sabrina’s lost smile. Her own also freezes. What’s more. She knows everything and yet is not allowed to know anything. She cries in the most unlikely places, on the train on the way home, in the supermarket. How can she help her daughter?
A mother fights for her child
Carola becomes a lion mum. She makes escape plans for Sabrina, befriends girls and boys from the scene who she hopes will help her. She talks to victims and their mothers and puts herself in danger.
She reads the book „And suddenly you’re his – Caught in the web of a loverboy*“. She always wants to be one step ahead so she can act to take her daughter out of the line of fire.
In the background, she calls counselling centres and contacts the youth welfare office. But she can’t get any further without a real name, nobody really feels responsible. Her daughter is also an adult. And she claims to be doing all of this voluntarily.
„I went through hell“, says Carola. „But it was always clear to me that I would stick by my child.“ In her despair, she wants to be strong. Strong for her child. And her unconditional loyalty pays off. Her daughter shows her some emails and gives her contact details of suitors.She makes contact with one of them, he says he might be able to help her get out. But at their first meeting, he sets conditions: I’ve fucked your daughter. Now I still want you. A farce.
"It was worse than a nightmare"
Carola calls it worse than a nightmare today. „So much has broken inside me.“ If your child doesn’t want help, the counselling centres say our hands are tied. She is fighting alone.
The lover boy repeatedly forbids her daughter from having contact with her. Meanwhile, he plays his game with other women. Sabrina may be his „main wife“, he makes the most money with her, but she is not the only one who is in bondage to him, whom he manipulates until she does everything he asks of her.
Who works for him as if controlled by a stranger, who he manoeuvres further and further into his dependency. Who goes procuring for him. Allegedly out of love.
The martyrdom of prostitution and bondage lasts four years.
Carola goes to the LKA with her daughter three times, three times she breaks off the conversation and runs away. Back into his arms. She can’t get away. Not yet.
Then she manages to get away.
Finally: Sabrina makes the leap
In the end, it was her body that forced her to take the final step, barely accepting any more food. She collapses several times on the street and is hospitalised. She starts therapy, visits doctors. She barely stays in her flat anymore so as not to be intercepted by him.
In the beginning, he terrorises her, calls again and again, threatens her. But in the end, they have so much on him that his real name is recognised by the police and he has to retire. Sabrina starts a job, mainly as a distraction.
Some smells on the street still make Sabrina nauseous and she experiences flashbacks to the bad times. Odour triggers lurk everywhere in everyday life, and those affected often struggle with them for years. Suddenly, hatred and anger come to the surface, and many turn it on themselves, Carola explains.
Even hugging someone you know can cause feelings of suffocation. It is no longer easy to allow closeness. Families break apart. Most need years of therapy to get halfway back to a regular everyday life.Four years have passed since Sabrina’s break-up and the façade seems unremarkable. Today she is married and a mum.
Nothing is as it was: forever changed
Carola’s worry about her child has broken her, she finds it hard to trust men, her foundations are shaken. But she no longer hates them. She has her daughter back. And that is more than she could have expected. But never again, she firmly believes, will they find their way back to the light-heartedness of the past.
In the end, what really helped her was the contact with another affected mother, who put her in touch with the counselling centre Eilod (the association that helped her the most at the time, by the way) and with whom she is still on friendly terms today. Because no one else can really understand what they went through. And what it means when your own child plunges into misfortune.Sabrina will never be the same again. And neither will her mum.
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Photo (symbolic image): pixabay
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