The story of a 20-year-old woman getting booked for a fake modeling gig and then kidnapped to be auctioned off as a sex slave sounds like a rip-off of a Liam Neeson movie, but that’s reportedly exactly what happened.
For obvious reasons, law enforcement didn’t initially identify the unnamed model when they found her stuffed into a suitcase.
But a UK model named Chloe Ayling has come forward as the woman who survived the harrowing ordeal, and she’s telling her story:
So, an unnamed model was lured to another country with a seemingly legitimate booking through her agent.
She was then kidnapped, drugged, and placed up for auction as a sex slave to someone who would buy her online.
If it’s not Taken, it could very easily be an episode of The Blacklist.
Yes, she “escaped” — through the actions of one of her kidnappers who was seeking to correct a mistake.
But that doesn’t make any of it less dreadful to consider.
The fact that Chloe Ayling has been brave enough to come forward is nothing short of phenomenal.
(Though we don’t know how she’d keep it quiet, since she definitely went missing for weeks)
That she got away at all sounds like a small miracle, if you believe in those.
In her statements to The Sun, Chloe Ayling describes her kidnapping experience in a frightening amount of detail.
““I’ve been through a terrifying experience. I’ve feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour.”
Awful.
“I’m incredibly grateful to the Italian and UK authorities for all they have done to secure my safe release.”
Nice of her to remember to say thanks even after her odeal.
“I have just arrived home after four weeks and haven’t had time to collect my thoughts. I am not at liberty to say anything further until I have been debriefed by the UK police.”
But she’s sharing a lot of what she experienced.
It sounds like at least one of her kidnappers enjoyed tormenting her with whatever story he thought would frighten her the most, because she was told:
“All girls are for the Arab market, and when the buyer gets fed up of a girl bought at auction, he can gift her to other people, and when of no interest anymore, feed her to tigers.”
Which sounds like something from a movie, but also like something that an awful man who’s kidnapped her and maybe has some suepr racist ideas about the Middle East would say if he enjoys a woman’s terror.
Chloe also talks about exactly how she was kidnapped:
She arrived at an empty warehouse in Milan for a photoshoot that had been booked through her agent.
“A person with black gloves placed a hand over my mouth from behind while a second person wearing a balaclava gave me an injection in my right arm.”
That can be super dangerous — as we suspect that the person administering the injection was not a doctor.
Get the dosage wrong and you can kill someone.
Give them a shot of something to knock them out without knowing their allergies or what medications they’re on, and you can kill them.
“I believe I lost consciousness because when I woke up, I was wearing just my pink undershirt made of chenille, and the socks I am now wearing, and I realized I was in the coffin of a car, my ankles and wrists in handcuffs, with a black tape covering my mouth, inside a bag where there was just a small hole in the zipper that allowed me to breathe.”
Horrific.
As it turns out, Chloe was not the sort of person whom they intended to target:
“After a few minutes a man came into the room, without his face covered and he told me in English that in the meantime their boss had called and that he was furious because they had seized the wrong person.”
That sounds almost farcical but still incredibly terrifying.
“I was not meant to be taken because the boss had seen my Instagram profile which clearly showed that I was a mum with a young boy and this went against the rules of the organization.”
Even evil organizations that carry out kidnappings and sexual slavery have rules, we guess?
“Despite being upset with my kidnapping, he explained that this imprisonment could not stop because in the meantime the organisation had published in the deep web two photos taken shortly after the aggression while I was unconscious, showing the publication on a…. site called Black Death.”
The “deep web” or “dark web” is just sites that aren’t indexed by search engines, so they’re “hidden” unless you know what you’re looking for.
A lot of illegal stuff goes on there.
In some cases, it’s relatively harmless like drug trading or the voluntary organ market.
In other cases, it’s where people swap child pornography or sell human beings.
“The photos confirmed the fact that I was in the hands of the organization, and some users had expressed interest in my sale.”
A nightmare.
But she was eventually dropped off at the embassy.
It turns out that being a mother at 20 very probably saved her life.
As is often the case with kidnapping survivors, a lot of people are calling her story far-fetched or accusing her of lying.
Unfortunately, some of them are even making these comments on her Instagram, which seems cruel to us.
But since one of her kidnappers has already been arrested and since law enforcement has apparently found the place where she was held, it sounds like her story might be realer than any of us would like to believe.
Hopefully, we’ll all know more in the coming weeks.