A woman who survived a brutal kidnapping and escaped being sold for her virginity and organs has shared the harrowing details of her ordeal, revealing how a sudden inner voice and three simple words saved her life.
A Journey from War into Hell
Lurata Lyon's nightmare began in the 1990s when she was just 17 years old. Fleeing extreme violence and ethnic cleansing in her Serbian hometown of Veliki Trnovac, she trekked across mountains to Kosovo hoping to find the Red Cross. After being rescued by two US soldiers, she believed she was safe. However, a local translator tipped off a human trafficking gang, who kidnapped the teenager as she went to buy a magazine.
A bag was forced over her head and she was taken to a hideout. There, the gang's boss encouraged the men to rape her until she revealed she was a virgin. The kidnappers celebrated, declaring they had "struck gold." Lurata was told her virginity had been sold to the highest bidder overseas. She was constantly held at gunpoint and forced to watch other unconscious women being raped as a twisted form of instruction.
"They took pleasure from my fear," Lurata told The Sun. "They said, ‘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.’ Having looked into human trafficking gangs, they were telling the truth."
The Miraculous Escape
While being driven towards the Albanian border with a gun pressed to her ribs, Lurata was warned that raising the alarm would result in everyone being shot. When the border was closed, the gang took her back to a house. The boss made a sickening offer: become his lover and the trafficking would stop. Lurata, by then willing to die, refused.
Furious, the boss told his gang to do "whatever you want" with her and "get rid of her." As she prepared to die, she begged her captor to "do this kindly," to which he agreed before leaving for the toilet. In that moment, she heard a clear voice in her head say "turn around."
On a table behind her were a gun and a ring of keys. She unlocked a wooden door but struggled with metal security bars before sprinting frantically down the stairs. "It was like a movie," she recalled. Her captor caught up, punching her so hard she flew across the street. From the ground, she spotted a van and screamed for help.
Survival, Asylum, and a New Life in Britain
A UN police officer found her, and after a gunfight with her captor, she was taken for an interview. With nowhere to go, she returned to her hometown, only to be captured again by vigilantes posing as soldiers. She endured six months of daily abuse in an abandoned "dungeon" until her father, a local doctor, tracked her down.
He bribed guards to let her return home for 24 hours to say goodbye, but instead smuggled her out of the country hidden in a truck. Lurata arrived in the UK and claimed political asylum. She became a British citizen in 2005, with her parents also surviving.
Now 45 and living in the UK, Lurata has written a memoir, Unbroken: Surviving Human Trafficking, and works as a motivational speaker and public speaking coach. She says she is "forever grateful" to the British people and is most proud of finding a way to remain kind despite her trauma.
"My trauma will always exist; it’s something you can’t ever forget," she said. "But I’m happy, grateful and lucky to have survived and am proud of everything that I have achieved."
