Hello everyone, Im writing on behalf of my best friend who is asking for donations to help her move back to her home country

My name is Karine.

I do not know how to exactly start this story… Im ashamed that I have to go to public with this but I need help. I have been abused by my family all my life. Since I was a little girl, they would tell me I was born only to serve my mother. They controlled my life and used me for financial gain. Loan after loan. They would use lies and guilt trips to make me do what ever they demanded and because I wanted to be a good girl, I did everything I could to help my family. I was prioritizing their needs over my health because I thought that’s what good daughters do. Nobody helped me, not the teachers, not even the child protective service so I grew up thinking this abuse was normal.

5 Years agos, Me and my alledge mother moved from our home country in Belgium to Spain to try and start a new life. They said it would be cheaper and better living there. Though realistically, my mother was doing the exact same things when we were in Belgium, Sitting at home watching netflix, play mobile games and smoking. She was even worse.

During the Last 2 years, I wasn't treated like a daughter at all, but more as "Care Taker". She locked me in my room. It made me feel i was trapped in there in that house, only to be allowed out to get food shopping, cigarrettes and her stupid coffee.

My only companion at that time was a cat that I adopted. Her name is Sweetie Belle. Shes means a lot to me, she was giving me the love I thought I was never allowed to feel. My mother was jealous and wouldn’t allow me to move away so the family took my cat away as punishment, they lied to me that it was only temporally to keep her safe and started to use her as hostage to force me to continue being my abusive mothers servant. It broke my heart when I realized I wasn’t going to see her again. They gave me a replacement cat to pretty much keep me quiet/ black mail.

In the end, I started to lose alot of blood because of my health issues but my mother didn't allowed to let me go to the hospital for a health check no matter how many times I passed out, or she would lose her "care taker", when there were other family members in the same area who could have covered for me but obviously they rather watch me suffer and do all the work like I always did. I was also loosing alot of my teeth due to my health. I couldn’t even communicate properly due to language barrier to get the help I need.

I needed to leave this hell of a situation…

I did call the Belgian embassay in Alicante asking for help. Their reply was "if they could help me, I'd have 5 days of the red cross back in Belgium but then I would become homeless". The police would also do nothing to help and only want money and then tell me the same thing. Manjana manjana, which means later and when they finally had enough of me then they would tell they can do nothing. They don’t even speak english there. It was driving me crazy!

I really believed that Spain would be the end of me.

I was able to get at abit of help few months ago due to a gentleman who spoke the same language and took me to a hospital and for a time being allowed to stay in his home (where I am currently residing).

I spent 2 weeks in hospital, where the doctors were able to do a complete check over on me and gave me blood and iron transfusions as well giving me treatment which I badly needed for years.

I spend the entire day in the hospital just listening to documentaries and sleeping. I instructed them to not let the family see me to try and guilt trip me to return back to them. This gentleman did help me get away from the family and took me to hospital, when he saw my health diteriating on the night he took me in.

Meanwhile the family stole a lot of my belongings, documents and even tried to drain my account to make me crawl back to them. So many meaningful and valuable items… Even my ID card. Im afraid it wont end there.

I have to admit, I'll have to start from zero or else this family will drag this conflict along for another years to keep me stuck here with them… and we need to get strong, right?

Well, I can't do it without help. Im working hard to make as much money I can to start over, but I’m afraid it isnt enough to be able to move in such a short time and I don’t know how long Ill be allowed to stay in this room as he prefered Id leave by September and its stressing me out thinking of ending up on the cold streets because its so hard to afford these apartments with my current state.

I'm looking for around 10,000Euros. I know it’s a lot… but it is the rough amount for me to move what belongings I have left, which isn't much, hire some people to transport my stuff back to Belgium since I am currently not strong enough to lift heavy items, find myself an small apartment I can live in just like I did in the past, and pretty much get the mental and physical help from doctors who I can speak to in my own language and try to restart my life again from scratch. It would mean to me so much If I could get this chance to escape these abusers, find my own home and rebuild my life.

I do hope that if you can kindly please donate or even just spread this story around to help me… to give a person who has been through hell and back another chance to try and restart her life again, I would be very grateful.

your sincerley

Karine