The writer won the 2020 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Best Print Report Award for this story
The writer’s interview on SBS Radio Hindi Service
By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, 18 May 2020 (IPS): A single mother, Mai (name changed) had the responsibility of providing for her young son and grandparents, who had brought her up in a poor rural province in southern Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. While she was looking for employment, somebody approached her on social media with an offer of a high-paying job in China. When she arrived in China, she was sold to a man for ‘marriage’.
For two months, Mai suffered violence and beatings from her `husband’, who kept her locked in the house. When she tried to fight back, the ‘husband’ sold her to another man seeking a wife. She was forced to have sex as the family wanted a child. When she became pregnant, she was given some freedom and allowed to work in a nearby shoe factory. Desperate to escape this forced marriage and slavery, she managed to connect online with a Vietnamese man, who referred her to Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, an Australian charity working in Vietnam.