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When Anthea was only 11 years old, her stepfather raped her while her mother was passed out in the same room. “I was afraid to tell anyone,” Anthea says, “afraid that they would not believe me and would blame me. The pain I harbored from this experience separated me from my family, and I began using drugs to make the pain diminish.”
“Sometimes when my stepfather was beating my mother, I would flee to my aunt's house for safety. However, her home also became a nightmare when my 19-year-old cousin held me down and raped me. Over the next two years, he raped me several more times.”
When Anthea was 15 years old, she began dating a man who was a Satanist. “I so wanted to get away from my family. In order to become an official member of the coven I had to be sacrificed by letting all 22 males and females sleep with me.”
“I began using drugs heavily, prostituting myself to support my habit, and to give money to the coven. I was stuck in this awful cycle of violence and addiction - I did not know how I was going to ever get out.”
Anthea would hurt herself deliberately, pressing lighted cigarettes into her flesh, mutilating herself “just to know [she] was still alive.” Sexual predators of all nationalities inflicted pain on her body for about $6 per encounter. “I was hurting,” she remembers, “but I could never cry.”
Anthea says God had a different plan for her life. “Because of the boldness of the outreach team from the Home of Hope, Western Cape I am safe and alive. I am a fully restored women.”
Anthea now works with SHI to help other women and children in bondage. She started a program allowing her to go into public schools and warn other young girls of the dangers of gangs and prostitution. She spearheads public education campaigns, and speaks at local, regional and national conferences on the issue of sexual slavery. She also leads an outreach team into the areas where she was once victimized. Anthea works to find others who are facing what faced - those longing for help, but not knowing where to find it.
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