Quest for Love

Memoir of a trafficked girl, during a year-long, turbulent relationship with a charming, 20-year old gangster who initially protects her. Once she falls for him, she is soon cast into abject betrayal and violence, leading to her certain demise. A last-minute change of heart has the gangster negotiate for her release from the trafficking ring. His directives for her survival enable her to remain out of the street life and ultimately, to heal and thrive.

This memoir invites the reader into the heart and mind of a young Belgian girl as she shares events out of one year of her life, her voice supported by the vocabulary and understanding of the adult author. The child's circumstances are brutal; she is being sold by a mentally ill mother into a murderous pedophile network. She desperately clings to the belief that in spite of all appearances, true love does exist, and searches for the faintest sign of it in the midst of hell. When her blind love for her mother is transferred onto a charming perpetrator, she experiences romantic passion, but is soon cast into abject betrayal and violence, ultimately leading to her certain demise. In the darkest of circumstances, a near-death experience shows her the truth underlying her phenomenal world, and she is given a glimpse of that great love for which she is so desperately seeking. Extreme, organized child abuse is horrifying, and often impossible to contemplate. And yet, acknowledging the reality of darkness is the first step towards healing. This account offers both the raw, cold facts as well as the resilience and grace from the victim's perspective, revealing that the darkest of nightmares is rarely just that, but commensurate with gifts of light. This ten-year old's journey suggests that heinous suffering can unlock hidden spiritual treasures of transcendence and unconditional love.

Anneke Lucas is an author, speaker, advocate for human trafficking victims and creator of the Unconditional Model. Her work is based on personal experience of a decades-long healing journey, after surviving being sold by her family as a child sex slave. Her healing through psycho-therapy, writing, yoga and meditation were synthesized during a decade of service with incarcerated populations through the non-profit organization she founded, and with survivors of sex trafficking inside and outside of prisons. Sharing her own healing shaped her message for personal and global evolution through the Unconditional Model, a modality she developed and teaches in workshops with therapists, yoga instructors and providers around the world.