Lost to a “Loverboy”: How One Mom Got Her Daughter Back

Hi everyone, the other day we shared the TV movie “Ich gehöre ihm” (“I Belong to Him”) by Thomas Durchschlag on our Facebook page. It's streaming through December 24 in a German broadcaster's online library. We added that if you're the parent of a daughter, this film is almost unbearable to watch.

It tells the story of a girl who falls into the hands of a so-called “loverboy.” After we shared the link, Carola (not her real name) got in touch with us. We talked on the phone for a long time. The text below came out of that conversation, and her daughter has signed off on it, too…

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By the time Carola realizes something is wrong with her daughter, the girl has already moved out. Carola always had a close bond with her second child. After the move, they talk on the phone a lot and see each other often, since they still live in the same city. Sabrina is 19 and ready for life.

But Carola is uneasy. She can feel that something is weighing on her daughter, whom we'll call Sabrina. Sabrina is quieter than usual, and in conversations she keeps getting distracted by messages on her phone. Something's off here, her mom senses. And she'll be proven right…

Under His Control: In the Grip of a “Loverboy”

What she doesn't know yet is that Sabrina has fallen into the clutches of a so-called loverboy. A guy in his early or mid-20s who looks like a top model. A pretty boy 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 mother. When Sabrina is at her place, she pulls her legs up on the couch like she's curled up in the fetal position.

Carola keeps telling her: Sabrina, I'm here for you. If you need help, just say so. Until Sabrina finally breaks down in tears. Thank you, Mom. Thank you. But I can't tell you what's going on. Not yet.

What Mom Doesn't Know: Her Daughter Is Selling Sex

In the beginning, her daughter sees ten johns. Per day! Later it's three or four, depending on demand.

Sabrina is hopelessly devoted to her loverboy, who keeps feeding her different names and birth dates. When she says she wants out, he hits her. She has bruises all over her body. He needs the money. The money she brings in for him!

He deliberately puts Sabrina in debt, with phone contracts or expensive orders that she has to “pay off.” He threatens to hurt her younger siblings or her mother if she says anything.

She loves him. She can't live without him.

Carola's Daughter Changes and Stops Smiling

When Sabrina visits her mother, the first thing she does is go to the bathroom. She feels dirty. Once she can barely get out of the shower without help. It's not just her soul that's suffering. It's her body, too.

The johns tend to be well-off men. At some point she gets to be pickier, and soon she no longer lets just anyone into her small apartment. Because that's where it happens. She wants out. But she can't do it.

I'm here for you. When Carola finally learns from Sabrina what's going on, her world collapses. Sabrina insists she's doing all of it voluntarily. For him. Out of love. It's just sex and quick money, she says. She's so in love. She's afraid Carola will disown her now. I'm here for you.

Mom Smiles Through the Nightmare

Her mom almost gets sick when she thinks of him. This guy who celebrated Christmas with them. A guy she had to pretend she knew nothing about, someone she wasn't supposed to know was hurting her daughter. She had to put on a brave face and couldn't say anything even though she knew. It would have been dangerous. For her. For her daughter.

He played his part well, Carola says. He was polite, and he even showed patience with Sabrina's siblings. She had to watch her daughter gaze at him adoringly, watch her give him perfume she couldn't really afford… making out, cooing at each other, the whole show. “You can't imagine how hard that was,” she says.

By now she has an explanation for why Sabrina stopped smiling. Her own smile freezes, too. More than that. She knows everything and yet isn't allowed to know anything. She cries in the most impossible places, on the train ride home, in the supermarket. How can she help her daughter?

A Mother Fights for Her Child

Carola becomes a mama bear. She makes escape plans for Sabrina and befriends girls and boys from the scene in the hope that they can help. She talks to victims and their mothers and puts herself in danger.

She reads the book “Und plötzlich gehörst du ihm – Gefangen im Netz eines Loverboys” (“And Suddenly You Belong to Him – Trapped in a Loverboy's Net”)*. She wants to stay one step ahead so she can act, so she can get her daughter out of the line of fire.

Behind the scenes, she calls one counseling center after another and turns to the youth welfare office. But without his real name she gets nowhere, and nobody really feels responsible. Besides, her daughter is an adult. And she claims she's doing all of this voluntarily.

“I went through hell,” Carola says. “But it was always clear to me that I'd stand by my child.” In her desperation, 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 for johns.

She reaches out to one of them, who says he might be able to help with getting out. But at a first meeting he sets conditions: I screwed your daughter. Now I want you, too. A farce.

“It Was Worse Than a Nightmare.”

Worse than a nightmare, Carola calls it today. “So much in me was broken.” If your child doesn't want help, our hands are tied, the counseling centers tell her. She fights alone.

Again and again, the loverboy forbids her daughter to have contact with her. Meanwhile he runs his game on other women, too. Sabrina may be his “main woman,” the one he makes the most money from, but she isn't the only one who's under his spell, who he manipulates until she does everything he demands.

Women who run on autopilot for him, as if someone else were steering. Women he pulls deeper and deeper into dependence. Who sell sex for him. Supposedly out of love.

Her ordeal of prostitution and total dependence lasts four years.

Three times Carola goes with her daughter to the LKA (the state criminal police). Three times Sabrina breaks off the conversation and runs away. Back into his arms. She can't let go. Not yet.

Then she gets out.

Finally: Sabrina Gets Out

In the end, it's her body that forces the final step. It can barely keep food down. Several times she collapses on the street and is taken to the hospital. She starts therapy and sees doctors. She hardly stays in her apartment anymore so he can't intercept her.

At first he terrorizes her, calling again and again, making threats. But in the end they have so much on him that his real name becomes known to the police and he has to back off. Sabrina starts a job, mostly as a distraction.

Certain smells on the street still make Sabrina sick, and then she gets flashbacks to that terrible time. Smell triggers lurk everywhere in daily life, and survivors often struggle with them for years. Hatred and rage suddenly come up, and many turn them against themselves, Carola tells us.

Even a hug from someone she trusts can bring on a feeling of suffocation. Letting anyone get close isn't easy anymore. Families break apart over this. Most survivors need years of therapy to find their way back to something like a normal life.

Four years have passed since Sabrina got out, and from the outside everything looks unremarkable. Today she's married and a mom herself.

Nothing Is the Way It Was: Changed Forever

The worry over her child has broken Carola. She finds it hard to trust men, and her foundations have been shaken. But she no longer feels hatred. She has her daughter back. And that's more than she could have hoped for. But she firmly believes they'll never find their way back to the carefree days of before.

What truly helped her in the end was meeting another affected mother, who pointed her to the counseling center Eilod (the nonprofit, by the way, that helped her most during that time). The two are still close friends today. Because nobody else can really understand what they went through. And what it means when your own child plunges into misery.

Sabrina will never be the same as before. And neither will her mom.

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Photo (stock image): Pixabay

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