I was sold as sex slave after traffickers held me at gunpoint – how I escaped to convict them in real-life Taken raid

ALARM bells rang in Shandra Woworuntu’s mind as she saw condoms scattered across the floor of a filthy New York attic on the first day of her new job. But moments later things took another sinister turn for the young mum as her boss asked her to undress – before pointing a gun to her head. Shandra Woworuntu was sex trafficked as a young woman and sold to the US Credit: Supplied Shandra and three other trafficking victims near a brothel as they were told to pose The New York City brothel where Shandra was held for years Credit: Supplied Shandra with a man named Steven who was eventually convicted of trafficking women in New York Credit: Supplied What followed was years of abuse at the hands of twisted sex traffickers who sold off Shandra to hundreds of men who raped her. She managed to escape on several occasions but was never free for long until a chance meeting with a US Navy officer led to a real-life Taken-style raid involving the FBI, a team of snipers and a slew of convictions. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! Shandra had left Indonesia for the US in 2001, then aged 24, to escape a crippling financial crisis that cost her her job as a banker. An advert in a newspaper sold her the dream of a hospitality gig for a top hotel in Chicago, a place Shandra had fallen in love with after watching American romance movies and listening to Whitney Houston. Leaving behind her three-year-old daughter, Tania, she was promised a salary of $5,000 (£3,740) a month, with accommodation provided. Flights were quickly booked as an excited Shandra landed at JFK Airport believing she would then be taken 800 miles across to Illinois. As the plane wheels hit the tarmac, her dreams of a better life felt like they were finally coming true. Shandra had left Indonesia for the US in 2001, then aged 24, to escape a crippling financial crisis that cost her her job as a banker Credit: Supplied Business cards from the many people who helped Shandra’s case Credit: Supplied Within minutes of meeting her new boss, known as Johnny Wong, it became an unimaginable nightmare. Most read in The Sun Shandra had unknowingly been trafficked to the US and was now expected to have forced sex at least 20 times a day by her sick captors. The now 50-year-old told The Sun: “When I landed at JFK there were six of us and it was split into two groups, one male with two girls and then I was with another two girls. “One was around 17 or 18-years-old and the other one was 15-years-old. I was 24, the oldest, and became the leader of that group. “They took us to a place in Queens, New York, in front of a hotel. I thought it was Chicago, I didn’t know. “I was looking at the window and someone handed a big envelope of money to Wong, who took it and told us I have to go with these people and stay overnight, and that we cannot travel to Chicago.” Shandra said she followed the instructions still hoping she was heading to her hospitality job. The girls were dragged inside a building and marched to the top floor as Shandra’s heart sank when the door was flung open. “The room was huge and there was a king or queen sized bed. It was filthy and I thought ‘why is it so dirty’,” she recalled. The FBI launched a full-scale investigation into the illegal sex brothel with Shandra’s help and pulled off a dramatic raid using her knowledge Credit: Getty Shandra stands to the right of the man in the centre Credit: Supplied “On the bed sheet, there was a stain – a dirty spot. I saw some used condoms on the floor and a side table by the bed. “I saw new condoms with different styles. I thought, ‘what kind of place is this?’” After being left alone in the room with the other girls for a few minutes, a burly man came in and demanded the women undress. “He didn’t speak English well. I understood what he wanted but I couldn’t answer him very well. I just said no,” she added. “I asked why he wanted to see my body and to see me naked. When I said no a few times, he took his gun and pointed it on my forehead.” At that moment, Shandra’s blood ran cold. She was in a state of shock and knew she had to make a choice – do as her new employers asked or face being killed. Shandra was led to a separate room and forced to undress so the men could look over her body and check for any tattoos or markings. She was then bundled into a car and driven to a new location with a gun pointed at her waist the entire journey. A man grabbed her wrists and led her to a building where two men spoke for a brief moment – and Shandra remembers hearing the phrase “Mama-san, a new girl”. She later learned that Mama-san is a term said to those who run a sex business, often a woman known as mama. Shandra continued: “I went inside and saw a big man with a baseball bat in the corner as this lady said ‘you will start working’.” After a short stay in the house of horrors, where men would come in and out with a host of drugs, Shandra heard that she had been “sold”. She said: “I couldn’t think of anything other than that I had to comply because of the gun and baseball bat. My life was on the line.” Her traffickers set a cruel, fabricated debt of $30,000 on Shandra’s head and said each time she had sex they would deduct $100 from the sum. That meant she was staring at the nauseating prospect of having non-consensual sex 300 times. She added: “I was sold and I didn’t earn anything, so it wasn’t a type of work. It was rape. “My trafficker made money but I didn’t get anything but abuse. “They created a debt on my body. My trafficker told me ‘you have to pay $30,000 for the job that I gave you’. It wasn’t a job. It was rape. “And the buyers didn’t care. The more I screamed, the more abuse I received.” She is a public speaker on women’s equality across the US The proud mum, in the white top, now lives in New York Credit: Supplied The devious nature of the seedy men paying for sex also meant they would often pay once but keep Shandra for hours. At this point she was using drugs to help cope with the abuse. She continued: “Twenty-four hours a day I was expected to have sex in brothels, hotels and working as an escort. “The drugs helped me to survive. To be numb. Not feel anything. And my mind was thinking about my daughter and just staying one day at a time.” Deciding she couldn’t go on, Shandra began to plot her escape. The first time she broke free she called a number given to her by a woman working at the house. She was told to escape the trafficker’s home and call the number as soon as she was safely out of sight. Fleeing the sex compound was hard enough as they were on the second floor of a tall home so she had to risk her life by jumping out of a bathroom window. Once outside, she quickly phoned the number – which led her to a friend of Wong, the man who had first picked her up from JFK Airport. Shandra was caught and forced back to her life of forced sex and drug use. The second time she escaped proved more successful as she again fled the home and managed to evade being caught. She was homeless for months in New York and left begging for food and cash. Eventually, a US Navy officer on holiday noticed her in tears and put her in touch with the FBI. They launched a full-scale investigation into the illegal sex brothel with Shandra’s help and pulled off a dramatic raid using her knowledge. She explained the Taken-style operation saw her put inside an FBI van and led across NYC until they passed the home she had spent months inside. After alerting the special ops team Shandra said: “They stopped. The whole team gathered and they moved me into a smaller car. “Someone stayed with me and said ‘stay here. Don’t look back’. “But I was curious, so I looked back to see what happened. I saw many people surrounding the building. The undercover officers had guns, with snipers surrounding the location. It was like a movie. They went in by force.” After swarming the brothel, Shandra was asked to identify the perpetrators as a dozen people were arrested. Wong was eventually convicted for trafficking along with two other men thanks to Shandra’s testimony. The proud mum was reunited with her daughter, and they now live together in New York. She is now a human rights activist after founding the survivors group, Mentari. In 2017, she was awarded a L’Oreal Woman of Worth award and made a speech outside the White House in 2015 with then Representative Carolyn Maloney. She copes with her trauma through a combination of therapy and medication, but admits the grim flashbacks continue to this day.