A woman who says she was kidnapped and abused as a sex slave for 13 years by a taxi driver in the Midlands, who also pimped her out and ‘sold’ her four children, has spoken out for the first time.
Anna Ruston, who changed her name after the ordeal, says she was a vulnerable 15-year-old in 1987 when a taxi driver called Malik took an interest in her and invited her to his home to meet his mother, brothers, and their wives.
Writing in her new book ‘Secret Slave’ Ruston said Malik called her a “white s**t” and raped her, before locking her in a bedroom and relentlessly beating her for 13 years.
She says she was prostituted to other men and her captor “sold” the four children she bore to him in captivity. She says Malik would stop beating her during pregnancy, but gave away her children to other couples for money.
The smell of garlic still brings back horrific memories as her captor used to reek of it when he abused her, Ruston told the Daily Mirror.
“I can still see that bedroom, the corner where I would rock in pain. Although after a while I stopped feeling pain, I think my body shut down.
“And I can smell it – the can I used as a toilet, the garlic he reeked of. I got to the point where I didn’t know what life was.”
Ruston says she tried to kill herself with painkillers, by throwing herself down the stairs, or trying to strangle herself with a scarf.
She says she was taken to the hospital with injuries on a number of occasions, but was never left alone with doctors or nurses.
Ruston told BBC Radio 4’s Today program: “There were always three or four people with me, so I couldn’t see an escape. I never answered the doctors I just nodded or shook my head.”
She said she believes people were afraid to help her for fear of being accused of discrimination.
“Malik dressed me in his culture’s clothes, dyed my hair black, made me wear a scarf and keep my head down. When he spoke for me they thought it was a cultural thing. And I think people are scared to be accused of discrimination.”
She says she eventually escaped with the help of a health visitor after Malik told her she would be taken to Pakistan where she feared she would be “stoned to death or sold.”
She wrote a note begging for help on a piece of paper along with a time she knew Malik and his family would be distracted for prayers for the Muslim festival of Eid.
The health visitor handed back a note saying she would ring the house phone three times when she was outside, allowing Ruston to run for help through the front door where a key had been left.
Ruston, who is now 44, has been free for 16 years. She says she is too scared to give evidence to police but was encouraged to write about her experiences as part of her therapy.
She claims her ordeal could happen on “any street in the UK.” Ruston had originally lived with her great grandmother, but after the elderly woman died, she moved in with her abusive step father, from whose care she was later removed.
Her fractured relationship with her own family meant she was not reported missing, she says.