[Music] when I first came to the United States I was 20 years old and working as an aair I didn't have much experience but I was eager also very nervous I grown up in a small town in France and hadn't ever spent time away from home let alone across an ocean my English still needed work but I was confident enough to get by I expected it to be a good year a new adventure a cultural exchange something I'd tell my friends about when I went home I was matched with the Joseph family I don't want
to name the exact town for privacy reasons but it was an upper middle class neighborhood quiet streets nice houses big backyards the kind of place you'd expect to find well behaved kids PTA moms and dads who worked non-stop I remember being so relieved when I first arrived I thought that would be easy nothing bad happens in places like this the Josephs had two boys Brock and Brandon Brock the older one was 12 he was a pretty typical kid kind of lazy sometimes rude but harmless overall he made jokes liked his Xbox and mostly stayed out
of trouble Brandon though was different he was nine and already had this coldness to him I don't know how else to describe it there was something off I think it's likely he had some some kind of social disorder when I first met him he just stared at me without saying a word not shy or embarrassed just staring like he was studying me after a few seconds he smiled and asked are you the maid I laughed awkwardly and said I was going to help look after him and his brother for the year he didn't laugh with
me he just kept watching it didn't take long to realize Brandon wasn't like the other kids my host parents warned me that he was difficult they said he had a bit of an attitude but that was the understatement of the century Brandon didn't just have an attitude he was mean and I don't mean the usual bratty stuff like teasing his brother or refusing to eat what he was served it was worse than that he lied constantly about everything he once told his teacher that Brock tried to choke him in the kitchen which never happened he
told the neighbor that his parents locked him in a closet at night he even told me that the last awe pair ran away because of him and that she was never seen again when I tried to scold him for it he narrowed his eyes and said don't tell me what to do everything was manageable for me even at that point but I do admit that I was a little frightened of him things only got worse from there one night about 2 months in I pulled back my sheets and froze there were thumbtacks scattered all over
my mattress I just stared for a second dozens maybe a hundred of them were pointing upwards waiting for me to lie down my heart started racing the mattress cover had tiny punctures everywhere I stood there in fear realizing how close I'd come to lying on them Brandon had been spying on me earlier that day I'd caught him peeking through a crack in the door when I was folding clothes I didn't think much of it at the time just assumed he was being nosy but after seeing all those thumbtacks I wasn't so sure I was honestly
so scared I didn't want to tell his parents afraid that they'd send me back to France so I cleaned up the mess and kept it to myself after that things became more and more strange Brandon started following me around the house I'd catch him peeking around corners watching me from the doorways sometimes when I was cooking or reading I look up to find him sitting across the room staring without blinking I never said anything I must admit I tried to avoid him as much as I could out of fear one afternoon I was watering flowers
in the garden when I smelled something off a sharp sour odor like something rotting I traced it to a corner of the yard where the soil looked freshly Disturbed I was curious so I grabbed one of those little garden shovels and started poking at the soil when I saw what was there I nearly screamed there were three Dead Rabbits buried there their bodies were twisted and cut in several places one had its legs tied together with string I ran inside to tell my host parents Mr and Mrs Jo Joseph looked concerned at first until they
pulled Brendan aside to ask him about it he gave an innocent look and said it wasn't him that was it they believed him Mrs Joseph said it was probably one of the neighborhood kids and told Brandon to go back inside I started sleeping with my bedroom door locked after that a week later I woke up in the middle of the night to a noise in my room I opened my eyes and saw a shadow near my bed it was Brandon he was standing there holding something I blinked a few times and realized what it was
a kitchen knife I screamed as loud as I could by the time the parents came rushing in the knife was gone Brandon had shoved it under the bed he convinced them that he'd been sleepwalking Mrs Joseph gave me an annoyed look as if to say why are you making such a fuss I pointed to the knife handle sticking out from under the bed and pleaded with them to believe me Mr Joseph knelt down pulled it out and showed it to Brandon he just smiled and said he had never seen it before and they of course
believed him I told them that my door had been locked so he must have picked it but they told me that was nonsense I felt so alone I had no one I didn't know what to do for better or worse a decision was made for me the next morning Mrs Joseph called me to the living room and said I had stolen her jewelry I was completely confused until she held up a pearl necklace I had never seen before for she told me she had found it in my purse which she was holding in her other
hand I begged her to believe me that I hadn't stolen it but there was nothing I could say to convince her Brandon stood in the hallway smiling to himself I knew it was him they fired me on the spot I flew back to France the next day I couldn't believe how easily Brandon had destroyed my life for months afterwards I was extremely depressed I thought I had blown my one chance at living in the US and feared I wouldn't get another one fortunately I found my way back to the state several years later and still
live here I have a good job and good friends I still think about Brandon from time to time I can only imagine the evil person he's grown up to [Music] become for most people traveling alone is terrifying and understandably so for some reason it's never bothered me all that much I've always been quite independent and outgoing so befriending new people comes naturally to me it's probably one of the reasons I decided to become an a pair also I've always wanted to become a child psychologist in my opinion one of the world's problems could be solved
if children had better parenting and proper guidance beyond that I've always wanted to experience America so working as an all pair was something I seriously considered I'm originally from Germany from a tiny village outside alone most Americans have never heard of it so when people ask where I'm from I usually just say Germany it's easier that way before you say anything I believe that my English is rather good or so I'm told it's gotten considerably better since living in the US and people are often impressed by it my father is originally from the UK and
did everything in his power to ensure that my English was as good as my German if not better I'm not sure if they have them here in the US but I had an electronic dictionary growing up that doubled as a translator I remember messing around with it a ton as a kid plugging in words and translating them with my dad I also read like crazy when I was younger which I think definitely helped me anyway my host family lives in a wealthy suburb in Northern California their house is unbelievable you might think living here would
be lonely but the agency does a great job of connecting nearby all pairs so I immediately clicked with a few girls in the surrounding neighborhoods my best friend here is an American girl named Jennifer she's great she's like me but a little louder and a little taller we've been Inseparable since we met we're both here for the same reasons working exploring and trying to make the most of our time abroad there's a huge college campus nearby and it's pretty much the only decent place to go out that isn't a $100 Uber away both the Frat
and bar scenes there are pretty good so that's where we spend most of our weekends I think a lot of the guys are naturally drawn to us because of our accents and the international card gets us pretty far it's supposedly difficult to get into fra parties without being in a sorority here but we don't have much of an issue the bars here are a lot more fun though our favorite spot is this bar called tap I've noticed Americans love giving their nights themes Taco Tuesday wine Wednesday I guess any excuse to drink on a weekday
you know it's kind of funny Tuesdays are the most enjoyable nights of the week for Jenny and I this story takes place on one of those nights about a few months after after I arrived to the US I was standing by the bar waiting on drinks for Jenny and I when this tall guy with Carly brown hair approached me and said you're German right that kind of threw me off people almost never guess I'm German European sure but not German specifically I don't really have distinctive German features so anytime anyone's able to guess my nationality
it fascinates me I laughed and told them he was right and he introduced himself as sebie with a confident smile we talked for a while and and everything was very natural I'll admit I get approached a lot when I go out I'm in shape and I know I'm decent looking but guys are usually kind of obvious and cheesy when they talk to me sebbi felt different the more we talked the more it seemed like he was actually interested in me as a person as opposed to just hitting on me he knew a lot of tidbits
about German culture which was something I quite liked about him a lot of the Americans I don't talk to don't know much about the rest of the world so it was nice to talk to someone well-traveled smart and cultured we talked and left for a while longer before I introduced him to Jenny he smiled and waved his friend over an Asian guy who introduced himself as Hunter he and Jenny immediately headed off all in all it was a great time before the night ended sebie asked me for my number and I gave it to him
without hesitation a few days later sebie invited me over for dinner when I got to his place I expected him to have dinner reservations ready or something but instead he was cooking a pie a dish for us in the kitchen it was quite sweet I ended up helping him prepare the meal and he opened a bottle of wine for us I had such a great time that I ended up sleeping over at his apartment the next morning I woke up and examined his room a little unlike most college Apartments it was quite clean he didn't
have any posters or typical decorations up but rather a bunch of landscape pictures his walls were covered with dozens of square photographs all black and white cast C Les cities Countryside views they all looked oddly familiar I got up and looked at them a little more closely realizing they all had locations printed on them they were all from Germany every single one with the exception of a picture of Monte Carlo Monaco sebie had woken up by then so I turned and asked him jokingly if he had a thing for German architecture he laughed and told
me about his dad's Arial Photo collection which he had picked some of his favorites from I walked back towards his bed and real realized there were some more pictures above his bed my jaw literally dropped when I saw that one of the pictures was a landscape of my Village taken from above the picture was like 20 minutes from my house I told him this and he got rather excited telling me what a crazy coincidence that was I was amazed the odds of that were so slim he then asked me a bunch of questions about my
hometown which I was happy to answer over the next few weeks sebie and I spent a lot of time together I was working and he had class during the week but we spent every weekend going out together plus Tuesdays everything was great he was a sweet guy and made sure I was comfortable and enjoying myself when we went out he was also quite nice to my friends which I appreciated his friend Hunter turned out to be a little weird though every time someone would play Take It Off by Fisher he would quite literally start stripping
in front of Jenny one night sebie got rather drunk significantly drunker than usual as he was walking me to his apartment he was going on and on about how much he loved German women and how he always wanted a German wife at one point he said he always wanted to marry an all pair because foreign girls are great with kids I brushed it off as some weird fantasy but that was the first thing he did or said that didn't sit well with me obviously not a deal breaker though he had been perfect up until then
but then came the first time he took me out to dinner he took me to this Italian spot and told me he'd picked it because they had plenty of vegetarian options which was sweet but I never told him I was vegetarian I gave him a little smile and playfully asked him how he knew I was vegetarian and he told me he saw it in one of my insta posts that eased me for the rest of the dinner but later when I was back home I realized my only post mentioning it was from years ago and
I post a lot so you'd have to scroll pretty far to get there let alone pick up on the caption I had used and that's not even mentioning the fact that all my posts are from a long time ago in Germany the next time I stayed over while sebie was asleep I unlocked his phone I remembered his password he hadn't exactly been careful about hiding it what I found in there was sickening there was a folder in his camera roll titled wife which contains screenshots of my social media dating back months posts captions tagged locations
even screenshots of old stories I didn't even remember posting his Notes app was even worse there were English translations of my old posts in there plus a rough schedule of when and where I'd go out based on my Instagram story posts there was information in there about my hometown about Germany about things I liked all based on my Instagram if you could believe it but the worst thing I found in its phone was a photo of my driver's license everything hit me at once the second night I had gone out in America I had lost
my wallet at a frat party which had my ID in it that's how we found my Instagram that's how we knew everything where I was from what I like liked my birthday none of it was chance he had planned all of it there was a long graphic message that went into disgusting detail about what he wanted to do to me which I don't want to talk about I didn't know who the guy in those messages was I couldn't stand to look at everything anymore so I grabbed my stuff and slipped out of his apartment without
making a sound regrettably I didn't take any photos for evidence the whole drive back to my host family's house my hands were shaking Germans take privacy seriously I felt sick my a pair profile was private but my ID he had my full name and with that I knew he could have found anything I didn't sleep that night I prayed that he hadn't been able to figure out my host family's address the next morning my phone exploded with messages they were all from sebbi asking me where I went why I left if I went through his
phone I sent him one final message telling him that if he ever tried to contact me again I'd call the police then I blocked him on everything for the next few days I lived in Perpetual fear worrying that he'd show up at any moment I privated my Instagram locked everything down and created a close friend story for when I went out just in case he tried to find me again thankfully he hasn't shown up yet and it's been about 3 months since I last heard from him still though I can't help but feeling this pit
in my stomach that he knows my host family's address and that he's planning something I hope I never see him again again but I'll update if something else happens update I hoped I wouldn't have to do this but the past few weeks I noticed the same silver car driving up and down my host family Street sometimes just sitting across the street from their house he's also tried to reach out to me through fake phone numbers and Instagram accounts all within the same time frame the messages always just ask me to talk but I haven't responded
to any of them all this gives me reason to believe he knows where I'm living and that I'm potentially in danger I'm building a case to present to the police but I've heard that they don't take this kind of thing very seriously luckily my all pair commitment ends soon so I'll be back in Germany soon [Music] enough this happened a few years ago I've always wanted to live in Europe ever since I was a kid it was my lifelong dream more than anything though I wanted to work with kids I've always had a way with
them and I knew ever since I was little that I wouldn't be fully content with my life if my job didn't involve caring for or teaching kids in some capacity so when I found out I could become an a pair in France where I could use my French from high school and be part of a family it felt like everything was falling into place the decision wasn't easy I'm from Canada and the move was a big one but France had favorable Visa options for Canadians and it was the perfect chance to improve my French Canada's
second language plus I had a few friends in Paris so I wouldn't be entirely alone there money though was a problem I didn't have family support I won't get into why that's personal but let's just say I was on my own I couldn't afford one of those expensive agencies so I used a free aair website instead not ideal but it was all I could manage that's how I connected with Leah Leah's Ed was warm and straightforward she needed help with her two kids while her husband traveled for work she seemed wonderful very polite and very
friendly on our video calls she was quick to call me Sheree and mael which felt different from home but in a Charming motherly way she asked a lot about me how I was with kids how I felt about family life but didn't talk much about herself still she felt genuine I trusted her the only thing that felt off was the kids I asked to meet them on our calls more than once Leah always had a reason why they couldn't join one was n the other was at school where they were on a play date with
a friend she promised I'd meet them the second I arrived it felt a little strange but I figured I'd see them soon enough Leah sent me a formal agreement everything looked proper and we agreed on my start date I booked my flight packed my life into a suitcase and said goodbye to Canada when I landed at Charles deal Leah wasn't there that surprised me from everything I had heard most host families meet their all pairs at the airport but then my phone buzzed it was a message from Leah telling me that she was stuck in
traffic and instructing me to go to the side drop off area where she'd have me picked up I remember using Google translate on her message because it sounded like she was going to have someone else pick me up and I wanted to double check I was right and that made me confused and a little unsettled despite that I followed her instructions a few minutes later a car drove up and a woman approached late 40s maybe with short blonde hair and a bright smile she looked nothing like Leah she introduced herself as Leah's cousin and said
you must be Leah's air she sent me to get you I hesitated something felt off immediately I asked her if I could talk to Leah and unlocked my phone she told me that Leah was probably still driving and assured me that she'd be waiting for me at home I called Leah anyway and it went straight to voicemail it didn't even ring the woman kept telling me that I'd be fine with a huge smile on her face I was confused but also exhausted from the flight and what was I supposed to do stand there in the
airport forever so I did what she said and got in the car the woman kept the conversation going non-stop as we drove she asked about my flight my life and Canada and if I was excited to start my new job but when I tried to steer the conversation back to Leah or the children she brushed it off just said that I'd love them and that I'd see them soon I started to feel worse and worse about the whole situation she was too polished tooo eager to keep me talking without actually answering anything the scenery outside
began to change I had the address in Google maps and the route we were taking didn't match we were heading away from the suburbs and into what looked like an industrial type area I started panicking I felt like I was in the process of being abducted I asked her directly where we were going and she responded lightly calling it a shortcut again repeating that Leah was expecting us I felt the blood drain from my face I knew at that point that she was lying I told her to take me back to the airport but she
didn't answer I told her I'd call the police if she didn't take me back to the airport and she told me to relax but I wasn't letting up no matter what I said she just kept repeating herself about Leah and insisted that I was overreacting the next time the car slowed down I kicked the door open and jumped out onto the street the woman didn't drive off instead she kind of just looked at me like I was the one who was acting crazy I called my mom who told me to get away from the car
get somewhere safe and call for help as I was talking to my mom I looked through the windshield and noticed the woman now on her phone speaking rapidly in a language I didn't recognize it wasn't French and it definitely wasn't English I couldn't shake the gut feeling that she was talking a Leah there wasn't another car in sight but under no circumstance was I getting back in that vehicle eventually the driver's side door opened and the woman took a step towards me I screamed that I was on the phone with the police and that actually
got her to stop without saying another word she went back to the car threw my suitcase onto the road and then sped off I got the license plate as she drove away but I was on the verge of tears with my mom still on the phone I ended up hitchhiking to one of my friend's houses I honestly don't know what I would have done without that option my friend's family helped me report everything to the police and eventually even agreed to help me with the fair back to Canada which I was beyond grateful for eventually
they updated me on what the police informed them apparently there was no registered all pair family by Leah's name the number Leah used was prepaid and untraceable all the photos of the children were taken from the internet everyone I talked to about this tells me the same thing I was moments away from being trafficked the worst part about that whole thing was that I wasted all that money on those plane tickets and traumatized myself permanently looking back I know how lucky I am I was away from something terrible something I can barely let myself imagine
the whole situation was calculated from start to finish and if I hadn't trusted my gut I might not be here to tell the story it took some time but I eventually made my way back to France this time through a verified agency I'm hoping to eventually fulfill residency requirements and become a permanent citizen here [Music]
