Telling the Story of a Stolen Childhood

Djena was brought from Guinea to the United States as a young child and was enslaved by a Guinean couple in an affluent Dallas suburb. Federal court convicted the captors in 2019. Her childhood and adolescence were stolen, leaving her with little ability to determine her own fate. Djena initially was not ready to talk, but later agreed to share her experience. She showed quiet strength while escaping and rebuilding her life. She taught herself to read and write and worked to catch up emotionally and mentally. She did not want to define herself as a victim and focused on moving forward.

"I first heard about Djena in January of 2019, when the Guinean couple who had enslaved her at their home in an affluent Dallas suburb were convicted in federal court. I learned that Djena had been brought from Guinea to the United States as a young child-she was barely ten when she arrived-meaning that the family had, in effect, stolen her childhood and adolescence. It was hard to imagine anybody growing up as a slave in modern-day America, let alone in an upscale neighborhood in a large metropolitan area. How could such a thing have happened here?"

"I reached out to Djena through the federal agent who had investigated her case. But Djena was working on starting a new life and wasn't ready to talk. A few years later, I shared with her a piece I had written for National Geographic on the sex trafficking of girls from the Indian state of West Bengal and neighboring Bangladesh. The two girls featured in that story had endured severe violence and brutality-different treatment, physically, than what Djena had suffered. Yet, there was a fundamental similarity between their experience and Djena's: a lack of agency in determining their own fate."

"Djena agreed to speak with me. As we talked, I was struck by her quiet strength, which she had clearly needed to summon in order to escape her captors. She was teaching herself to read and write-and she seemed to be trying to catch up with the emotional and mental development that she'd missed out on, to finally arrive at a delayed adulthood. It was also evident from our conversation then, and from our subsequent exchanges, that Djena did not want to see herself as a victim, even though she had been one in the past. She was marching forward."

Read at The New Yorker