A first-hand account
There is a news story. You may have seen it. It circulated in the media and was repeated again and again until it was accepted as an established fact: the French police intervened and rescued victims of human trafficking – women who were manipulated, exploited, kept in miserable conditions, without documents, without money, without freedom.
What was never reported is what truly happened. I was there. Let me tell you, my story.
6:00 AM, November 28, 2023
I was in France of my own free will. I have been practicing yoga for more than 20 years, and I had chosen to come to France for a period of intense practice, solitude, and study. I had fallen in love with France, with the culture, with the antique bookstores, with the books I found there. My stay was coming to an end, and I had a plane ticket to return to Romania the next day – November 29th, 2023. I had my ID. I had my phone. I had money.
I was staying in a small building in the courtyard of a house. I had requested this, because my spiritual practice involved a lot of solitude. It was not luxurious, just a clean, simple space. It was a small, well-arranged room: a bed that folded into the wall, a folding table, enough space to do yoga practice, to read, to write. The other people staying there were my friends. We did not need to be “rescued.”
My life there was very peaceful and harmonious. Until 6:00 am on the morning of November 28th, 2023.
I heard violent noises. My first thought was that thieves had broken in. I went out into the yard and saw flashing lights, heard wood breaking, footsteps and shouting. Everything happened so fast. I didn’t have time to understand what was happening.
Two masked officers broke down the gate to the yard. They were shouting: “Police! Police!” A woman armed with a gun rushed towards me, she hit my shoulder with the butt of her weapon and tore down the curtain from the door. Shouting, she pushed me onto the bed. With the gun pointed at me, she twisted my arms behind my back and handcuffed me.
She tightened the handcuffs hard. My wrists hurt. My left shoulder hurt where it had been hit. Outside it was 2–3 degrees Celsius. I was in my pyjamas, without socks. The doors of the building were wide open. I was cold and I was afraid.
No one explained anything to me. I saw masked officers passing in front of me with machine guns, with dogs, some with grenades. Everyone was shouting. Everyone was agitated. I didn’t understand what was happening and I just hoped it was a bad dream and that soon I would wake up.
The accusations
After a while a police officer came with a translator. They read out the accusations to me: human trafficking in an organized form, mental manipulation, complicity in rape.
I could not understand. How could I, a peaceful yoga practitioner who had done nothing illegal, nothing immoral, be accused of human trafficking or an accomplice to rape? It didn’t make sense. They repeated it several times and I still couldn’t understand, I could hear the words, but they didn’t make sense.
Meanwhile, police officers passed in front of me and made comments. They said I was probably a prostitute, and this was why I lived in the courtyard because that was where I met clients. A female officer told her colleagues that she had read somewhere that brothels are legal in Romania. They commented on how strange we were for not reacting violently. They looked at me as if I was some animal from a circus.
This is how the French police “rescued” me.
In custody
I was taken to the police station in Nanterre through the morning traffic with the sirens on, my hands cuffed behind my back. The trip lasted maybe an hour or an hour and a half, but for me it felt never-ending.
I was taken through many locked doors, body searches and long moments of waiting. The cell they took me to was square-shaped, with beds like L-shaped tables along the wall. On those “tables” there were thin mattresses. The floor was cold concrete.
There were four of us in the cell. One of us had to sleep on the floor. We received only a thin blanket that stank of old sweat. There was a permanent artificial light. I no longer knew whether it was night or day.
We were thirsty. We did not have water. We asked and then waited a long time for them to bring us small plastic cups of tap water, which was not enough.
We did not have enough food. No one explained to me that if you refuse a meal, you do not receive another one. On the paper I signed when I left it said that I had refused two meals on the first day. I did not refuse them. I did not understand what those officers were asking me.
I could not brush my teeth while I was in custody. I asked for a toothbrush. I was told to give the phone number of someone in Paris they could call to bring me one. I had no phone numbers.
To go to the toilet, we had to signal the video camera in the cell. Many times, no one came. When someone did come, they would say: “not now, we are busy”. The toilet was at the end of a corridor. The doors had no handles and did not close.
One time, I stayed a little longer because I washed my face. The officer guarding me came in after me to see why it was taking so long.
My period started and I had strong pain. I asked for a painkiller or to see a doctor. I did not receive anything.
I had no lawyer. It was explained to me that there were too many of us in custody at that time and that they did not have enough public defenders, and that the law allowed them to continue the interrogation if the public defender did not appear within two hours.
No lawyer appeared.
Every day I endured endless hours of interrogation.
“We don’t care”
On the evening of the second day in custody, they told me I could leave. When they took me, two days before, in handcuffs, I only had the pyjamas I was wearing, my ID and phone. The phone remained confiscated. They gave me back my ID, two used metro tickets and a lip balm that had been in the pocket of my jacket.
I asked about my belongings, my clothes, my money, everything I had was still where I had been staying, the place they had taken me from.
I was told the address was under seizure and that I was not allowed to return.
It was night. It was cold. I was wearing pyjama pants, a sweatshirt, and a jacket. I had my ID in my pocket and nothing else. I was alone in a foreign country, without money, without a phone, without any way to return to where I had been staying.
I asked the investigators what I should do.
They told me directly: “We don’t care.”
On the first day in custody, they asked if I wanted to notify someone. I gave them my boyfriend’s phone number. The next day, during interrogation, they told me they had called him and that he said he did not know me.
I did not think they were lying. I thought he had been scared, that there had been a misunderstanding. I was alone, without a phone, without a lawyer, and now apparently abandoned.
Only later, after I was released, did I learn the truth: they had called him from a hidden number, no one identified themselves, and when he asked who he was speaking to, they hung up on him.
I went out into the street and cried. It was 10 p.m., it was dark and cold. I stayed for hours in front of the police station, asking people who passed by to lend me their phone for one minute so I could send a message.
Many people refused. I was standing in front of a police station, and they probably thought I looked like a criminal.
Finally, a young man who had just finished a call let me send a message to my boyfriend on WhatsApp: “I have been released. I am in front of the Nanterre police station. I have nothing. Please send someone.”
After many hours of distress, someone I knew came for me.
At 6:00 am, I arrived at a house that some friends had rented in a hurry. I took a shower and cried with gratitude for such a simple thing. I returned to Romania on December 1st, wearing my pyjamas, with a plane ticket sent by my boyfriend to a friend’s phone and printed out at an internet café.
Instead of a conclusion
The press says the police rescued victims. That those women were living in miserable conditions, without documents, without money, controlled and exploited.
I was there. I was one of the women they talk about.
I had my ID. I had money that remained in my room because I was not allowed to take anything and which, even now, I have still not recovered. I had a plane ticket for Novemeber 29th that I had bought for myself.
I was there of my own free will, to practice yoga, for culture. I was not alone. There were dozens of people there, and not just women as it has been reported.
We ate together, watched movies, talked, laughed.
None of us filed any complaint saying we were victims, that we were exploited or that we were held in that house against our will.
The complaints that dozens of us filed were against the French police. Against the way we were treated during and after the raid.
The so-called dirt and miserable conditions that was spoken about did not exist before the raid. It appeared afterwards.
I cannot forget how in custody, the police made me leave my shoes in front of the cell door, and there was only a cold concrete floor in the cell, while their boots left traces of mud on the new carpets and also on the walls and on the doors of a house that was being readied for Christmas.
This is the first article in a series of three about the events of November 28, 2023. The true story that you will not find in the press.