Human trafficking survivor Timea Nagy to address Winnipeg sexual exploitation conference

Attendees at a conference on sexual exploitation in Winnipeg will hear from a woman Thursday who survived human trafficking.

Timea Nagy immigrated to Canada as a teenager from Budapest, Hungary in 1998. At the time she was promised $1,000 a month childminding and cleaning in Toronto. The fact she couldn't speak English wasn'ta problem.

Instead,she wasforced into the sex industry.

"We weren't fed. Our money was taken away. Some of the girls were beaten. We were emotionally and physically tortured," she said. "That went on pretty much for three months."

Nagy is the keynote speaker Thursday at a conference on Child Sex Tourism and Trafficking in Winnipeg organized by the groups Beyond Borders and EXPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes).

To survive her months of abuse, Nagy says, she had to let go of the girl who loved to dance and sing.

"The minute I was given stripper clothes and the first time I was sexually assaulted I decided to shut myself down," she said. "I became numb."

After three months, Nagy says, aCanadian worker at a strip club noticed something wasn't right and reached out to her.

"I communicated with them through a dictionarypointed at words like 'please,' 'help,' 'save,' 'passport' and they helped me,"Nagy recalled.

The man who was found responsible for enslaving her did the same thing to dozensof other women, she said. When police arrested him they found 134 Eastern European passports in his office, she says.

It took more than a decade for Nagy to finally realizeshe was a victim of human trafficking, and even more time to reconnect with the person she was before the abuse.

"It takes a very, very long time to have the courage to open up those feelings that you stuffed away," she said

In 2009 she started to advocate for other victims in the system and speak with families. She also works to prevent other girls and women from suffering her fate.

Nagy urges parents to teach daughters aged 12 to 21 how to be awareof the signs of a potential sex-trafficker.