Child slave freed through Jesus' voice

A woman who was enslaved from the age of three has revealed the terror she faced until she was set free.

Rakthai Sophia Loibl’s said her life was marked by chains – not just of circumstance, but of servitude.

“My earliest memory is of crying inside a locked supply room,” she told Christianity Today, after her mother sold her as a child labourer in the Thai Muslim community where she grew up.

She was handed over for 2,000 Thai baht (about £50) in Bangkok – and her mother never returned.

“I wondered if I would stay there for a few days – but my mother never came back.”

Loibl became a slave to the local imam. She cooked, cleaned and served, slept in a room that “could only be unlocked from the outside, like a cage” and was punished violently if she failed to meet expectations.

“When the imam found out [I had pretended to work or pray], he would hit me and lock me in my room for three days without food or water.”

By the age of 18, she was pregnant by her captor.

After she gave birth, he took the baby instantly.

Years passed before she saw her daughter again.

At 25, pregnant again, Loibl heard something that changed her life: “It’s OK. Just stay alive.”

The voice, she said, was powerful yet gentle.

One night at three in the morning, the voice told her to escape.

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