Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave (15 page)

During this process my doctor asked for my parental and family medical histories. I had none of that. At times I don’t want to tell people about my past, and for some reason this was one of those times. In lieu of the truth I told him I had never met my biological family. My social worker then went the extra mile to try to find some information for me, but there was no information to be had. That is another sad fact of slavery, of human trafficking. Other people will be able to take specific preventative steps toward good health if, for example, they know breast cancer or strokes run in their family. I will probably not have that opportunity.

RA is not curable, but treatment can make a world of difference in how well a person feels and how much they are able to do physically. Now that I know warmth helps my joints, I often take long, hot baths. I have never done well in cold weather and can see how fortunate I was to have ended up in California rather than Maine, Montana, or Minnesota.

Today I still take medication, but I also get steroid shots in my hips every two months. It helps if I stay active with gentle exercise, so I walk as much as I can. Left untreated, RA will take a lot of out of you. I know it did me. That’s why I am careful to take extra good care of my body now.

Sometime after my diagnosis I made the decision to stop taking the other medications I had been taking. The insomnia medicine, the medication for anxiety, and the prescription for depression: gone. All of it. I stopped because I did not like the way they made me feel, and even I could see that I was too quiet and too withdrawn when I was on the meds.

I believe under certain circumstances that taking medication under the supervision of a doctor or therapist can be helpful. I also believe that those prescriptions helped me tremendously early on. After I was rescued and into my years with my first two foster families I was too nervous, anxious, and depressed to function well. But now I was no longer that intimidated young girl. For me, the medication did what it was supposed to do, and then I was done with it. Besides, it was way too much with the addition of the medications for my arthritis.

The big concern I had about having RA was that because of it I might not be able to go into my career choice: law enforcement. From the day I had been rescued, I had wanted to help others like me—people who were held in captivity. I later found that my RA would not affect my goal, but that small scare made me focus on taking the first step toward my dream, and that was to become a citizen of the United States.

All throughout this time legal
battles were brewing for my former captors. Mark Abend was a frequent visitor and often drove me back to Orange County to meet with prosecutors. By now I looked forward to these sessions because with each meeting I felt The Mom and The Dad were that much closer to getting what was due them. What goes around comes around.

There were many interviews, and the officials kept me up to date about their plans to bring me justice. At one point they asked if they could use a letter I had written to my former captors. I don’t know if The Mom and The Dad ever saw the letter, but my therapist thought it would help me if I wrote it. Now Mark and his team thought it would help the case if the judge could see it. I am not sure of the date of the letter, but from the style of my writing, I was probably about sixteen. Here is what I wrote:

Hi,

My name is Shyima Hassan. I have a big family in Egypt, five brothers and five sisters. I had the best brothers and sisters in Egypt. I had the best time being with them. I loved them so much because they loved me back and they made life easy for me. When I needed someone they were there for me.

I also had friends in Egypt. I had this person that was there for me, that I played with. Yes, I had friends, too, like everyone else. I also had a mom and a dad who loved me before you blackmailed them and you made them give me up. That was the day I thought life was over, and you know why? Because you took me away from my life. That’s when I also lost faith in God. You guys made me lose my one true love in the world because of all the things you guys told my family and the things you did to me.

You made my life miserable and you did not care. You guys treated me like crap in Egypt and in the U.S.A. I had to keep my mouth shut because of what you said you would do to my sister. And, yes, I am away from my family because of what you said she did. So I had to deal with you because I love my sister and would not want to see her in jail. You not only blackmailed my mom and dad, you blackmailed my heart.

Now I have a better way of life away from you guys. I have a great family. I am almost done with high school, too. Life is just great without you guys and I know I have God with me, too. I am living my life like a real teenager and everyday I thank God and everyone else who saved me away from you.

I was surprised to learn that Mark was so determined to see The Mom and The Dad pay for what they’d done to me that he was going to fly all the way to Egypt to meet my parents. I think he hoped to get facts to back up the prosecution’s case. I tried to prepare him as to the kind of people he might find, but even so, he must have been quite taken aback when he met my family.

Mark later told me that when he met with my mom and dad, a lawyer and a stenographer were there. It sounded as if my parents were afraid they might get into trouble and wanted to be sure the meeting was recorded in a legal fashion. I believe that The Dad paid for these services for my parents. Mark said that at the meeting my dad looked quite frail and in poor health. My dad told Mark that he’d recently had open heart surgery and that my captor, The Dad, had paid for that, too.

Mark must have been astounded at the lack of compassion my parents showed. Even after this much time, rather than saying, “We miss Shyima. We love her. When can we see her?” they made it clear to Mark that they wanted me to go back to my captors.

I have to hope that some of that was their not understanding that what they’d done to me was wrong. Most of us enjoy a decent standard of living here in the United States, but it was not unusual for poor families in Egypt to sell their children into service to a wealthier family.

My parents, I think, saw their children as income opportunities. My mom and dad had so little that in their eyes everyone needed to contribute financially, even the kids. My placement with The Mom and The Dad had brought my family about one hundred Egyptian pounds every month. At the time, that converted roughly to seventeen US dollars. Many families in the US spend more than that for a meal at McDonald’s.

I had always been told that most of my “wages” had gone to repay what my sister had stolen. How much could it have been? Even with the debt of honor thrown in, I believe I was held by my captors long after my sister’s debt had been repaid.

Through Mark I learned that by this time my parents were living in a dirt house, which meant that whatever money they’d lost when I’d been rescued was missed. And through pictures that he either took or was given, I could see that my family’s clothes were as dirty and worn as they had been when I was taken away from them. But you know what? It didn’t matter. It had not been my choice to leave my family. I was not given the option to stay, and I can tell you that if I had been given the choice, I never would have left my loved ones. It didn’t matter that we had next to nothing. We had love for one another, and when all is said and done, love is the only thing that is important in life. That my captors’ home had been nicer than my family’s was of no importance to me. Not many would trade a nice house for twenty-hour work days, no pay, no vacations or days off, no medical care, being slapped, and continually being told that you are stupid. Even now I get angry just thinking about it.

My sister was willing to testify on behalf of my captors too, the sister who’d stolen. After hearing this I can only assume that she had been told either by my dad or their lawyer what to say. “They treated me very well when I was there,” she said over and over again in her videotaped pretrial interview. If that was the case, then why had she stolen from them?

•    •    •

After that it was “hurry up and wait.” Again. I was learning that the legal process in the United States takes a long time. While I waited, I kept busy at work and going to school, but I didn’t tell many people what was going on. For the most part I kept my former life private. Especially at school. Even though I knew a trial was looming that could potentially bring me a great deal of personal satisfaction, few people outside my family knew about it. Part of that was because I wanted to be a regular kid. The other part was that the last thing in the world I wanted to do was see The Mom and The Dad again. But when the time came for me to confront them, I did.

I so badly wanted my former captors convicted that I could taste it, but speaking up against The Mom and The Dad with them in the room was one of the hardest things I ever did. I was glad Mark was there to help me through this unpleasant task. My foster dad was supportive, but I always thought first of Mark whenever the word “dad” popped into my brain. I am still blown away that Mark spent so much time over many years to try to convict The Mom and The Dad. He didn’t have to do it, and honestly, most others would not have.

Early on in the proceedings Robert Keenan and Andrew Kline had been assigned to my case. I needed two lawyers because they each handled different areas of the law, and this case was complex enough that there was a lot of legal ground to cover. Robert was based in Los Angeles, and Andrew in Washington, DC. Both men prepped me for the trial and took me through many last-minute changes. I hated revisiting the terrible memories in the depth that we did, but I knew it was the only way to make these people pay. I had no notion of what that “pay” might amount to in terms of jail time, but I hoped it would involve a long stay behind bars. I knew, though, that the more information Mark and the lawyers had, the better chance we would have of a conviction and a strong sentence.

One of the things I had to do was watch video footage that had been taken while I’d been in captivity. This was a tense process for me. The footage had been seized along with other documents and records, not long after I had been rescued. While I watched, Mark and my lawyers asked question after question about what was going on with the family when each video was shot. Who was in the video? What were they doing? Saying? And most important: Where was I?

We wanted to show through video that I had not been part of the family. The Mom and The Dad were apparently going to claim that I had been. In one video the family is celebrating their youngest daughter’s birthday. All of the family members are shown seated at a table in the dining room and are surrounded by plates, cups, glasses, silverware, and food. There is a lot of food. I pop in and out of the video as I hurriedly clear plates from the table, bring more water, and place other food out for people to eat. If I was part of the family, then why wasn’t I seated at the table having a good time like everyone else?

I was surprised to learn that my biological family had consented to being filmed for a video. In it many members of my family stated how much they loved and missed me, and how they wished I were back home with them. That video was the hardest for me to watch. I had many mixed emotions, but mostly, looking at the footage made me feel sad inside. Then I thought of the many times my dad had yelled at me for not going back with my captors, and all the times my mom had told me I had to stay. I thought too of my sister who had changed the course of my life with her actions.

Eventually I began to cry. Mark was in the room with me, as were Robert and Andrew. Mark gave the lawyers a look, and they stepped away. Then Mark sat next to me and tried to give me courage. “It doesn’t matter what they say,” he said. “These people aren’t in your life anymore. You have a lot of support here;
do not
let these people bring you down.”

He was right, but more than what my family said on the video, the saddest part of watching my family was that, other than my mom and dad, I didn’t remember any of the people. How wrong is that? I should have recognized every person caught on camera. I should have known how my mother moved, how my sister tilted her head. But I didn’t. I didn’t recall any of it, or any of them. All I could recognize was that my mother looked much older, and my dad, who had always been small and thin, had lost even more weight.

On the surface it looked like this should have been a pretty open-and-shut case. My captors had held me against my will, which is a violation of many different laws, both state and federal. But a case like this, I learned, is never easy. Initially there are jurisdictional issues to settle. Which law enforcement agency gets to prosecute, and for which particular crime? Then there is the fact that in the United States we operate on a system of innocent until proven guilty. Everyone here has the right to an attorney, and once The Mom and The Dad lawyered up, their legal team did everything they could to delay justice. It is amazing how many kinks one side in a legal battle can throw into the mix.