She thought she was going to a party. Instead she was heading for 15 years in a strange land - first in
captivity, then on the streets. Now she is back home and in a three-part series the Herald tells her story.
By JOHN ANDREWS
In the bowels of a ship
rolling towards South America, the young woman was locked in a box, terrified.
Moapi Tukufenoga, born in Niue and raised in New Zealand, had become trapped so naively.
She remembered being invited aboard the ship with some friends, but what followed was a nightmarish blur.
A man with an exotic accent had talked to Moapi and some friends on a night out in central Auckland. He was a sailor.
"Come to the ship," she recalled him saying. "You don't have anything to lose."
More than a decade later, as she sobbed on her sister Leslie's shoulder in the arrival hall at Auckland Airport, the woman - who had come to be known as Sabrina - reflected just how wrong the sailor had been.
That moment of teenage folly, deciding to listen to her friends and follow the sailor to the cargo ship, had caused her to lose 15 years of her life.
The young woman's unwanted passage had ended in Ecuador, but that was just the start of her nightmare ordeal. She was held for months in captivity chained in a dungeon and exposed to depravity.
Upon her eventual release, the young woman from Auckland ended up on the grimy streets of a country she did not know, where people spoke Spanish, a language she could not understand. To stay alive she had to fight off dogs for food in rubbish bins.
She scratched together a new life for herself and survived for 15 years before she had the strength to seek help to get home.
When finally she was rescued with the help of her sister and people who had taken care of her in Ecuador, Sabrina had an unbelievable story to tell. This is her story.
Since returning to Auckland last month, Sabrina has gradually outlined to Leslie and to the Weekend Herald the emotional shocks she is trying hard to forget.
Her memory dimmed by the passage of time and blurred by mental anguish, Sabrina tells how, at the age of about 18, she and some girlfriends had been at an Auckland disco one night back in mid-1987 when they met a sailor.
He invited them to his ship berthed downtown.
"It was like a party on the ship, then a drink," said Sabrina.
Sabrina is hazy about some details of her departure, but is adamant that she did not intend stowing away on that winter's night.
"I did not want to leave my mum, my sisters. I never thought of going away from my family," said Sabrina.
From what she has been able to elicit, Leslie suspects Sabrina was given drug-laced drink to keep her sedated during the voyage and that she was kidnapped for possible sale and use in pornographic movies.
Sabrina did not realise it but she was on her way to years of sheer hell in Ecuador, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
During the journey, she remembers being hidden in a coffin-like box in a cabin and being fed fish and chips and green vegetables by the sailors.
Her arms crossed over her chest, Sabrina thought she was losing her mind in the darkness of what became her temporary jail.
She recalls the box being below a bunk, away from the prying eyes of customs and police officers. At one stage she was taken to a hot compartment higher up in the ship.
"My head was going round and round all the time until I got over there [Ecuador]," she said.
"The only thing I remember is having a drink with my girlfriends, next thing I'm in another country. I had never been on a ship in my life."
Sabrina's story of how a teenager from Auckland ended up held captive in Ecuador sounded bizarre, to say the least, when it first emerged.
But United Nations, United States State Department and NGO reports reveal her experience is all too common.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff, who became involved with the case in June, told the Weekend Herald: "To those of us who have led sheltered lives, it is absolutely bizarre and horrific. But for those who live in Third World countries, who fall prey to organised criminal elements, it's probably quite common.
"You read the stories of the girls from the rural villages and mountains of Thailand who are sold into the sex trade and it really is a nightmare."
A report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights noted the abduction of women and children as a form of modern-day slavery.
"The recruitment, clandestine transport and exploitation of women as prostitutes, and the organised prostitution of children of both sexes in a number of countries is well documented," said a UN fact sheet on contemporary forms of slavery. "A link has been established in some places between prostitution and pornography."
A State Department report on human trafficking published in June noted that worldwide more than 700,000 men, women and children were bought, sold and transported and held against their will in the past year. Many were forced into the sex industry.
Goff said that given the international evidence, Sabrina's experience was unusual only in that she left a developed country and ended up in the Third World.
"It's unusual in that it happened to a person in a country like New Zealand where that would be relatively uncommon, but certainly not unusual in a lot of the developing world where there isn't the same protection or value put on human life."
Sabrina says she has no idea how long her journey lasted. Eventually she was secretly taken ashore to an apartment block in a town she still cannot identify.
Her hosts were a man and a woman. "Every second, every minute, every day I suspected something was going on," she told the Weekend Herald.
"I felt that at first they pretended to be nice and kind to me. The first day was quiet. Just silence. No television, no radio.
"But I felt there was something strange. The next day they locked the room door.
"They gave me drink. It was clear water. I think it could have been drugged.
"I realised I was kidnapped out of my country," said Sabrina.
At one point early on, she tried to bring attention to her plight.
"I put my head out a window in the apartment above the street. I saw policemen and I said, 'Help!' and started screaming," she said.
"The woman covered my mouth and pulled me backwards. I ran downstairs but a man dragged me by the hair back to the top of the apartment building.
"I may have been there weeks. Then one night they took me to another place.
"They brought a black van. The people had masks on their faces.
"They put a pillow or cover over me so that I couldn't see where I was going."
After a long drive, Sabrina says she was hustled into a tiny basement dungeon where she was chained by her right ankle.
Being confined in a dank, windowless cell meant Sabrina lost track of time and she had no idea where she was. It was not until later she learned she was in Ecuador, more than 11,000km from Auckland.
Home to more than 13 million people, the Republic of Ecuador is dwarfed by its neighbours, Colombia and Peru, on the Pacific Coast of the northwest of the South American continent.
Oilfields, especially to the north near the Colombian border, have been a rich supply of income. It has drawn plenty of foreign workers, which in turn has generated an industry of its own: kidnapping for ransom.
New Zealander Dennis Corrin was among a group of foreign oil workers captured by armed bandits in northern Ecuador in October, 2000. He was freed after 147 days when a ransom of $30 million was paid.
Amnesty International reports note kidnappings are common. Locals, not just foreigners, are subjected to human rights abuses. Amnesty's report for this year says torture and ill-treatment remain a concern.
The report recorded allegations of more than 25 extra-judicial executions carried out by police in Guayaquil, the city from which Sabrina finally fled.
Guayaquil, the second major city after the capital, Quito, is a major port. It is about 100km north of another port, Puerto Bolivar, which has ties to New Zealand, thanks to that most famous of Ecuadorian exports - bananas.
Demand for Ecuador bananas was such in New Zealand back in the mid-1980s that a ship would arrive with a consignment every three weeks. Two companies sent at least six ships on the round trip (these days, four new ships from one company ply the route). The journey took about two weeks, although sometimes the ships returned via other ports, extending their journey.
Back then, the vessels were looked after in New Zealand by McKay Shipping agents.
Don Meehan, who worked for McKay in Auckland back in the 1980s, remembers the Ecuadorian ships well. Some of them were nicknamed the "orange roughies" because of their bright colour.
He does not remember any suggestion of anybody being held captive on one of the ships, but he remembers plenty of anecdotes about the crews over the years.
"There was one ship that was suspected of hiding Ron Jorgensen [the notorious Bassett Rd murderer who vanished in 1984], but that was never confirmed," said Meehan. In 1988, 20kg of cocaine was discovered on board the Provincia Del Guagas, in what was then the largest drugs haul in New Zealand.
In May 1987, about half the crew of the Rio Amazonas mutinied, refusing to follow orders to sail through the Iran-Iraq war zone.
But Meehan says the Ecuadorian crews were generally well-behaved.
Fred Oliver, a retired former McKay cargo superintendent, has a theory of his own about how Sabrina ended up at sea.
"What I suggest - and I don't know of this case - [is that] she went on board the ship, had a few drinks, passed out and the ship sailed at night. That's the most likely scenario that comes to my mind. I don't think they would forcibly abduct her but I can imagine that [other scenario] happening quite easily."
Whatever happened down at the waterfront, Sabrina ended up bound for Ecuador, leaving her sister, Leslie, back in Auckland wondering where she had got to.
The youngest of six children in a dysfunctional family, Sabrina had been separated from her siblings, living with relatives in several parts of Auckland - and on the streets.
She was born at Niue's Lord Liverpool Hospital on March 21, 1969.
She was living in the village of Tuapa, when her mother decided in 1972 to follow her estranged husband and move to New Zealand with her children. While living with an uncle in Glen Innes, Sabrina and Leslie were enrolled at Parnell Primary School.
After stints with relatives in Otara and Grey Lynn and living in social welfare care, Sabrina ended up with her mother in Richmond Rd.
The sisters believe she attended Auckland Girls Grammar School, although the school seems unable to find any records of her attendance.
Leslie, a year older than Sabrina, said of her sister: "She was very attractive, tall and a bit of a tomboy.
"She was tough. She was a high jumper and sprinter and represented her school.
"She couldn't jump any more after she was pushed down some steps. She had to have an operation on her leg."
Just days before disappearing, Sabrina visited Leslie who thought her sister seemed happy.
When she hadn't heard from Sabrina for a while, Leslie had no idea where her sister was.
"I didn't think she had disappeared to another country," said Leslie. "We never heard from her, not a word.
"I thought she was busy with her friends and she would come and see me. I would peep outside to see if she would come.
"Mum used to ask me, 'Where is Moapi [Sabrina's Niuean name]? How come she doesn't come and visit me any more?"'
Sabrina did not get to see her mother, Ligiahi, again. Ligiahi died after a hit-and-run accident in Mangere less than a year after Sabrina went missing.
The first clue of Sabrina's whereabouts came seven months after her disappearance.
Leslie received an anonymous letter saying Sabrina was being held against her will.
The Ecuador stamp on the envelope was the only indication of the letter's origin. The writer warned Leslie not to tell anyone of Sabrina's plight or she would never see her sister again.
Leslie received a second letter - she thought Sabrina wrote it - about a year later. It bore the address of Walter, a man who befriended Sabrina after she escaped from her dungeon cell.
Sabrina adamantly denies being the author of either letters.
Over the next 12 years, Leslie regularly sent letters to Ecuador hoping her longlost sister would receive them. Sabrina said she never got any of them.
Asked why she did not tell New Zealand police once she knew where her sister was, Leslie said: "I thought my sister's life was in danger. I was only thinking of her."
A few years later, with the help of her husband, she telephoned what she believed to be New Zealand's Interpol office.
"They didn't want to know," said Leslie. "They said they do not do missing people [inquiries] outside New Zealand. They hung up on me."
Why were the police not called straight away when Sabrina disappeared? And why was no police action taken when a call was finally made?
Sabrina did not have a straightforward upbringing. According to Leslie, family members would not know exactly where she was at particular times.
As for the police reaction? On the face of it, she was a Pacific Island runaway.
Think of the case of Agnes Ali'iva'a, a Samoan teenager who turned up dead in a Mt Roskill ditch in 1992. Her death was initially treated as a drowning, despite several suspicious aspects of the case.
By the end of 1987, Sabrina was not dead in a ditch - but she was in deep peril. Huddled on the hard, cold floor of a dungeon cell, she listened as fellow captives cried out for their mothers.
She knew their despair. She thought of her own mother and her home in New Zealand.
Steeled by her tough upbringing in Auckland, where she sometimes lived on the streets, Sabrina was determined to stay alive.
She describes how she learned to ignore the rats and ants vying for the dirty drink and stale food her captors slid to her.
"They locked me in a small room, like a doghouse, one for animals," Sabrina told the Herald during a series of interviews this month.
"All you could hear was screaming and crying, day and night. I heard young girls screaming out for their mummies and daddies.
"There were cages and small rooms for one or two people. There was no bed. I could hear the voices of children. They were next door."
Desperate for some kind of compassionate human contact, she reached out to her fellow captives the only way she could.
"They used to knock on the wall and I would communicate with them by knocking back."
Her leg manacled to a chain, Sabrina fought back when masked men tried to grapple with her and drag her outside.
"They used to put injections into my arms," she said. "I used to sway. They did it when I was angry, if I did not behave, if I screamed or cried.
"Every day masked men came in. They always tried to molest me and touch me. I had to fight back.
"I was like a savage, like an animal. I never gave up. I bit one of them on the foot. Four of them had to hold me down.
"Sometimes I used to grab at their eyes. I think some of the other girls were hit if they didn't behave. If you behaved, you got more food.
"The chain was never off my leg," she said, pointing to an ankle scar caused by the grip of a padlock.
With no bed in her cell, Sabrina had to sleep on the floor. "I only saw the darkness," she said. "I think that's when my eyesight got worse."
From the figure "27" on the padlock, Sabrina concluded she was one of about two dozen young women being held in similar, adjacent cells.
"I think they took them [the other girls] away to do movies, I think sex movies," she said.
Sabrina denies that she was ever forced on screen or into prostitution, although she breaks down when asked about what happened to her. She mentions that there are dark things she can't speak of.
International organisations suggest that women held in such circumstances are probably abducted for commercial sexual exploitation.
The Protection Project, a Washington DC-based organisation that studies international trafficking in women and children and lobbies for beefed-up laws to combat it, has noted cases in Ecuador.
"Ecuador is a country of origin and destination for trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual exploitation," says a Protection Project report on Ecuador.
"The United Nations Commission on Human Rights reports that criminal networks based in Columbia regularly traffic women to Ecuador and other Latin American countries for purposes of prostitution."
The report says that about 6000 children are in prostitution in the capital, Quito, and Guayaquil.
Sabrina wasted away in a cell wondering if she would ever get out alive.
The men whose visits she feared would regularly appear at her door, sending her into a violent rage in preparation for self-defence.
One day, something unexpected happened. A woman joined one of the men who opened her cell door.
The couple gave her clothes and shoes. Shielding her eyes from the light, they quickly ushered her outside and on to a nearby village.
A festival was in full swing. Afraid of what was going on, Sabrina was confused by the couple's intentions.
"It was like they were stealing something," she recalled.
"I didn't realise they were trying to free me. They tried to lose me. I just stood there. I felt as though they were trying to pretend they weren't with me. They wanted me to go. They never said anything.
"I just stood there for about an hour. I stood there like an idiot."
Then finally, it dawned on her. "This was my time to escape."
- Additional reporting by Eugene Bingham; copyright New Zealand Herald
* andrewsj@ihug.co.nz
Monday
* Ordeal on the mean streets of Ecuador
Tuesday
* Big sister comes to the rescue.
The Moapi Appeal
The Weekend Herald is offering to help raise money for Moapi Tukufenoga as she works to pull her life back together. Her sister spent thousands of dollars supporting her and arranging for her repatriation.
Donations should be sent to
The Moapi Appeal,
Editorial Department,
New Zealand Herald,
PO Box 706,
Auckland.
She thought she was going to a party. Instead she was heading for 15 years in a strange land - first in
captivity, then on the streets. Now she is back home and in a three-part series the Herald tells her story.
By JOHN ANDREWS
In the bowels of a ship
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