PINNED down to the floor, mortal terror spread through Lurata Lyon as her evil human trafficker captor instructed his goons: “Flip her over and rape her, I want to watch.”
The 17-year-old screamed as five men furiously tore off her clothes. She could barely breathe but managed to yell six words that would spare her from such a monstrous attack.
In utter panic, Lurata – who had never kissed a boy, nor had any romantic relationships – hysterically cried out: “Don’t do this, I’m a virgin.”
It was a moment that made her vile captor’s eyes light up. He called off the sickening attack and sinisterly told his fellow thugs they had “stumbled across a huge cargo”.
This was just the beginning of an unimaginable ordeal suffered by Serbian-born Lurata, now in her 40s, who is bravely speaking out about her ordeal to raise awareness over the horrors of human trafficking.
Now a British citizen, she reveals how her virginity was sold to a twisted overseas bidder and at gunpoint she was forced to learn how to ‘please a man’ by watching girls being raped, some of whom were unconscious.
Lurata, who lives in London, was also threatened with forced prostitution and heard her captors make plans to sell her organs – before she miraculously managed to escape in scenes similar to a Hollywood film.
Yet her ordeal was far from over. She was arrested by “crazed, vigilante” monsters, who subjected her to daily sexual abuse for six months before yet another daring getaway.
Having survived more than many could even imagine, Lurata says she’s “happy, grateful and lucky” to be alive. Yet the horrors of her trauma endured in Yugoslavia in the 90s endure.
Lurata tells us: “I remember my clothes being ripped off. They were so vicious and so aggressive. I was so frightened. I thought they were all going to rape me.
“Some of them had pinned me down in a starfish position while the others got ready to attack me. That’s when I started hysterically screaming, ‘Don’t do this, I’m a virgin.’
“When the boss heard it, he called it off but one of them wouldn’t stop. He had to physically grab and pull him off me. They had all gone crazy in their heads.
“He said, ‘Didn’t you hear her boys? She’s a virgin. We’ve stumbled across a huge cargo.’ I was so naive I didn’t even understand what he meant.”
Start of a nightmare
Lurata’s horrendous story began when she was forced to flee her hometown of Veliki Trnovac aged 17 amid extreme violence in Yugoslavia during the 90s, before it split into six separate states.
Her father, a local doctor, discovered an ethnic cleansing murder squad had been dispatched to the village.
That evening, Lurata trekked through the mountains to Kosovo before catching multiple buses to reach the capital, Pristina, hoping to find the Red Cross, who she believed could protect her.
Exhausted, outside a pub she broke down in tears and was fortunately found by Brian and Peter, two American soldiers from the United Nations international peacekeeping force.
Despite it being extremely risky for them, they offered her food, shelter and protection. But also alongside the duo was a local translator, who tipped off a human trafficking gang.
Rapists’ lair
On the day Lurata was kidnapped, she had already spent months hiding inside the soldiers’ home, waiting for them to secure a safe passage for her to reach the Red Cross.
“I was driving myself mad,” she says. “I was scared, worried and missing mum and dad and [fearing] what could have happened to them.”
Lurata raced to a newsstand across the street to buy a magazine to distract herself – but the trafficking gang were waiting for her.
Within seconds of leaving the home, she felt men standing behind. A bag was put over her head and she was thrown into a van, which sped away.
She was taken to their lair, where the sadistic boss encouraged his goons to gang rape her before calling it off after realising he could sell her virginity to the highest bidder.
After that, she was groomed, mentally abused and forced to watch women being raped and performing sexual acts on their captors to “learn how to pleasure a man”.
He said, ‘If you give yourself to me and become my lover all of this will go away’
Lurata Lyon
Lurata recalls: “The gun was constantly held to my head or pointed at me. Even though I was hysterically crying, I was still made to watch everything. It was sickening.
“There were a couple of occasions where they raped unconscious women. They were just objects to these men. The pain from those memories will be with me until I die.”
Lurata believes her captors took joy from “psychologically abusing me” and trying to break her.
“It was a case of ‘Let’s scare her, let’s tell her everything,’” she says. “I remember them saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve sold you to the highest bidder’.
“And, ‘Give up. You’re never going to survive this. Once he’s done with you, we’ll put you in prostitution and then we’ll sell your organs.’
“They took pleasure from my fear and having looked into human trafficking gangs they were telling the truth, they meant every single word.”
Twisted offer
Four weeks into her kidnapping, Lurata was taken to be ‘shipped out’ and knew she was going to “disappear from the face of the earth”.
Sat in a car with a gun pointed at her rib cage, they drove towards the Albanian border. Lurata was warned if she raised the alarm they would “shoot everyone”.
When they arrived, the border was shut. And back at one of their houses, the furious boss made a sickening offer that would spare her from being trafficked.
“He was always hitting on me,” Lurata recalls. “Then he said, ‘If you give yourself to me and become my lover all of this will go away.’ But by that point, I was scared but willing to die. I’d had enough and I refused.”
Furious, he declared Lurata was “more trouble than she is worth” and told one of his gang: “Rape her, do whatever you want to her and then get rid of her.”
Preparing to die, she begged her captor “do this kindly” and asked to pray before the horrors began. He agreed and left the room to go to the toilet.
During those quiet moments, she thought of her parents and suddenly a voice in her head told her “turn around”. Behind on a table was a gun and a ring of keys.
Frantically, she scrambled for them, unlocked the first wooden door but struggled to open the metal security bars before exploding down the stairs.
“It was like a movie, I can’t describe how frantically I was running. I was missing steps. I flew down them. But when I reached street level, I could feel him right behind me,” she said.
“Bang. He punched me in the face. It was so hard that I flew across the street. On the floor, I spotted a van nearby and started screaming for help.”
What was I trying to survive for? I was buried alive in this small room, with no way out, no escape
Lurata Lyon
Inside was a UN police officer, who was just finishing his shift. He ran to help her only for Lurata’s captor to start shooting.
During the ensuing gunfire, she crawled towards the police car where she was shielded behind a door. Within moments, UN vehicles surrounded them.
After a police interview, she had nowhere to go. Previous saviours Peter and Brian picked her up but were unable to let her stay so she retraced the mountainous route home.
Lurata recalled: “When my mum saw me, she cried and screamed, ‘You shouldn’t have come back’. She was panicking because things had gotten so much worse.”
Dungeon hell
Soon after, “crazed vigilantes” pretending to be soldiers from the national army arrested her. During interrogations in an abandoned building in the mountains, she was savagely beaten.
She explains: “They didn’t believe my story and were so frustrated they beat me. I lost teeth, they dislocated my jaw and my ear became ripped from the power of their punches.”
They branded her when she refused to confess to crimes she hadn’t committed and the pain was so excruciating she passed out.
“I woke up with my eyes swollen shut,” Lurata says. “I was bleeding, confused and disorientated. I thought I had been buried alive.”
For the next six months inside that dungeon, Lurata was sexually abused daily, sometimes multiple times a day. She decided to stop eating, hoping to die more quickly.
“I didn’t want to continue to live because of the abuse,” she says. “What was I trying to survive for? I was buried alive in this small room, with no way out, no escape.”
Escape at last
But Lurata would escape. Her father tracked down her captors and bribed guards to allow her to ‘return home for just 24 hours to say goodbye’. In reality, he had another plan.
“My dad didn’t care about what happened to him or my mum,” Lurata says. “He knew they would likely be executed for helping me but accepted that risk to save me.”
That evening she hid inside a truck and was smuggled out of the country. After a few weeks she arrived in the UK where she claimed political asylum. She became a British citizen in 2005, while her parents survived too.
Lurata, who later wrote her memoir Unbroken: Surviving Human Traffickingsays she’s “forever grateful” to the British people.
She’s most proud of “finding a way to remain kind” in spite of her experiences, pointing out: “Trauma and cruelty can turn people into monsters.”
She adds: “My trauma will always exist, it’s something you can’t ever forget but I’m happy, grateful and lucky to have survived and am proud of everything that I have achieved.”
Lurata’s book Unbroken: Surviving Human Trafficking is available to buy online. She also runs Apex Retreatswhich offers fitness coaching, holistic healing and meditation in Marbella.