"I kidnap girls from their traffickers. Their pimps never know it until the girls are in the car with me, speeding toward the safe house."
Iana Matei did not always do such things. In fact, Matei, a once battered, imprisoned woman, had spent 10 years carefully constructing a better life halfway around the world.
This life was interrupted by a single phone call that would eventually lead to the rescue of over 400 victims of forced prostitution.
Iana Matei has achieved notoriety in the international community for her fight against human trafficking in eastern Europe – including the Reader's Digest European of the Year award in 2010. However, her solutions are local: teaching rescued children vocational skills and developing projects with sustainable jobs. Thus depriving traffickers of one of their most valuable tools: the false promise of work abroad.
Author Pamela Ravan-Pyne shares a fictionalized biographical account of Iana Matei's initiation into the world of human trafficking. The three girls profiled in I Kidnap Girls – Tara, Louisa and Nicoletta – are composites of real-life experiences from the rescued victims. A portion of the sale of each book helps to fund the work of Iana Matei's non-profit, Reaching Out Romania.
