Trapped by a Facebook job advert, freed by a stranger in a taxi

Debts piled up. Eventually she had no choice but to quit and start looking for something else.

That is when she saw the advert on Facebook Marketplace: a job in Trinidad and Tobago, all expenses paid, work waiting on arrival.

A woman calling herself “Valentina” messaged her on WhatsApp. They spoke by phone. The offer sounded real because Valentina sounded real.

“We spoke directly,” Sofia recalls. “I heard her voice. I believed it was real.”

The truth unfolds

Sofia had no way of knowing that Valentina was part of a trafficking network. She boarded a flight to Trinidad and Tobago believing a new life awaited her.

It did not take long for that belief to collapse. The people who met her at her destination were not the people she had spoken to. Whatever she had been promised evaporated. Sofia had been trafficked for sexual exploitation.

“I was kidnapped and forced to do what they told me to do,” she says.

For weeks she lived under the control of her captors, in constant fear. At one point, they pushed her to help recruit other Venezuelan women using the same false promises that had trapped her. It was a line she would not cross.

“I didn’t want other people to go through what I went through,” she says.

An ordinary day, an extraordinary chance

Sofia prefers not to dwell on those weeks now. “I buried that time,” she says. But one day she is willing to revisit, because it changed everything.

She was sent outside to take out the garbage – and saw her opening. She packed a few belongings, slipped out, and got into a taxi.

Another passenger was already inside: a Dominican woman who had lived in Trinidad and Tobago for years and immediately sensed something was wrong. Sofia told her what was happening. Rather than turn away, the woman suggested they stop near a police station and report it. Sofia agreed.

“I felt it was God’s work,” she says.

At the police station, for the first time since she had arrived in the country, Sofia felt safe.

“That was when I felt I was finally out of it,” she says.

Rebuilding, with support

Sofia’s escape marked the beginning of a longer process, carried out in partnership between national authorities and the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Trinidad and Tobago’s Counter Trafficking Unit connected her to medical care, including forensic examinations, health screenings and counselling.  She remains under their protection for the time being.

Through its long-running partnership with the Unit, IOM Trinidad and Tobago has provided survivors like Sofia with emergency food assistance, safe shelter, mental health and psychosocial support, and vocational training geared toward long-term reintegration.

The same partnership has trained counter-trafficking personnel and run public awareness campaigns to help others recognise the warning signs Sofia missed.

“Everything has been done correctly,” she says. “I have felt supported.”

Looking ahead

Sofia has since told her family in Venezuela the truth about what happened to her. Her son, now seven, remains her biggest reason to keep going. She hopes to return to education, attend university and build a stable career – and a secure future for them both.

She is also determined that her story might spare someone else the same ordeal.

“Not everything is real,” she says of opportunities advertised online, urging others to ask questions and verify before they travel. “I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else.”

Even in her darkest moments, she says, she held onto belief. “You have to have faith in yourself.”

Asked what she is most proud of, she does not hesitate: “Having the courage to escape. I am a strong woman. I was able to get out.”

The World Day Against Trafficking in Persons is marked annually on 30 July.

*Name changed to protect identity.