Layla is 11- years old. She is feeling very lonely. Her mother does not want her to have a Facebook account, for which the legal age is 13. Yet everyone at school have it and she has opened one anyway. A man used a fake Facebook account to contact girls from Layla's school. He pretended to be a teen ...

Layla is 11- years old. She is feeling very lonely. Her mother does not want her to have a Facebook account, for which the legal age is 13. Yet everyone at school have it and she has opened one anyway. A man used a fake Facebook account to contact girls from Layla's school. He pretended to be a teenage girl on Facebook and succeeded to make "friends" with other girls from her school. By the time this "girl" sent a friendship request to Layla, they had 32 mutual friends. Layla wasn’t sure if she knew her, but they had 32 mutual friends, so she presumed that she did, and she accepted the “friendship” request. She began sending Layla friendly messages, and they started having more personal conversations online, like “friends”. Layla was happy to have found someone she could confide in. At some point, she asked Layla to send her a naked picture of her. Layla felt uncomfortable with the request but did not want to offend her, so she did. Layla was subsequently asked to send more pictures of her. When Layla refused, her “friend” started threatening her to share her naked picture to Layla’s friends and family. Layla resisted and her “friend” created a fake Facebook profile with her naked picture, for the school and family to see. Learning about the situation, Layla’s mother immediately called the police.

Karina was born near the Lithuania–Latvia border. Her alcoholic parents were incapable of caring for her thus she was sent to a state-run children’s home. Her sisters were also sent to group homes, scattered across the country. Growing up in a children’s home was tough as the wardens treated ...

Karina was born near the Lithuania–Latvia border. Her alcoholic parents were incapable of caring for her thus she was sent to a state-run children’s home. Her sisters were also sent to group homes, scattered across the country. Growing up in a children’s home was tough as the wardens treated children badly and beat them heavily for any perceived misdeed. The only person who ever visited her was a man who claimed to be her godfather. He told her she could live with him when she turned 15. One day, however, when she was 13, he raped her, but she did not tell anyone as she did not think they would believe her. When Karina turned 15 and without her consent, she was sent against to live with her godfather. Shortly after her 16th birthday, a woman named Dana introduced herself to Karina as her sister and asked if she could drop by Karina’s place. She came with her friend and got to know Karina and her friends. The next night Dana invited Karina and her friends over to her apartment and promised to pay for the taxi. When they arrived, there were more girls and Greek men speaking in English, drinking alcohol, and laughing. Karina and her friends were told to chat with them, but they refused, saying they were uncomfortable. Dana said they owed her friend money for the taxi ride. Dana then told them they would be prostitutes from now on. When they refused, Dana’s friend threatened to call “the gang” if they continued to refuse to pay for the taxi and sell themselves. From that day on, Dana became her madam. When Karina turned 17, Dana told her she was sold in Italy. There, men took her to a brothel filled with girls and women aged 14-32, trafficked from Belarus, Poland, and Lithuania. Pimps prevented them from escaping and used violence to force them to work in the streets. After 2weeks in Italy, Karina had a client who understood Lithuanian. She took a risk and begged for his help. His friend took Karina to the police where the police officer contacted a social worker.

Alexander is 15 years old and lives with his parents and an 11-year-old brother. His father is a lawyer and has a good income that allows the family to have a rather high standard of living. His mother works as a shop assistant. The father has been having a problem with alcohol abuse for many yea ...

Alexander is 15 years old and lives with his parents and an 11-year-old brother. His father is a lawyer and has a good income that allows the family to have a rather high standard of living. His mother works as a shop assistant. The father has been having a problem with alcohol abuse for many years. Sometimes he drinks a lot and gets extremely aggressive. When this happens, a minor mishap at home prompts an outbreak of violence. He loses control and beats his sons and wife. Alexander’s mother feels ashamed of her husband’s uncontrolled aggressions and hides this from other family members and friends. She depends emotionally and financially on her husband. After each violent event, she accepts her husband’s apologies and his promises that it will not happen again. One evening, the father came home from the office highly aggressive and found the dinner burned on the stove in the kitchen. He noticed that something was not quite all right and eventually found out that his youngest son, Tomas, had been caught stealing in a shop and was reported to the police. This evening, the father started hitting Tomas until the boy was on the floor and did not move and the father was still not stopping to hit him. Alexander was scared and upset and intervened so that the father turned to him and started beating him. Alexander and Tomas were both badly hurt and injured. Their father was however always conscious of not hitting their faces so that the signs of violence could not be spotted by people at school or on the street. The next morning, when the boys left the house at the usual hour to go to school, they decided to not return home after school but to take the bus to where their uncle lived. They had a good relationship with their mother’s brother and trusted him to help them and to know what was the right thing to do. Their uncle found the two boys in front of his door when he returned home after work that evening. He took them in, listened to them and let them to stay overnight. He called the boy’s mother, his sister, informing her that the boys were at his home and would stay there for the night. The next day, he decided to call a lawyer to get some information and advice on how to behave in this situation.