Iryna had experienced hell on earth: She had been threatened with guns pointed at her head, knifed, raped, verbally abused, sold for sex, left suicidal and apparently stripped of all dignity.
She experienced all these after a man lured her into the dark world of sex trafficking, according to the Baptist Press.
She was eventually rescued.
In September, Iryna sat in a New York courtroom to provide emotional support to a girl who also fell victim to sex trafficking.
While watching the court proceedings, Iryna started getting emotional. And then she began to weep.
"I wanted to feel the celebration," she told the Baptist Press. "But I felt the heart of God breaking for that man. It was a deep-rooted sadness of 'it doesn't have to be like this.'"
Iryna was accompanied by Raleigh Sadler, the director of justice ministries for the Metropolitan New York Baptist Association and leader of the Let My People Go movement, a group that assists churches in the fight against human trafficking.
"Iryna is a strong girl, but I knew this would open up wounds," said Sadler. "I knew going to the sentencing of this man would be hard for [Iryna]. Her trafficker is still not in prison."
Iryna stared at the man sitting stoically in chains—the pimp who brutalised the young girl sitting beside her. The judge rendered a verdict: six and a half years to 11 years in prison.
"On one hand, it's such a big victory," Iryna said. "The tide is changing. It's not the girls who are being prosecuted anymore. We're finally seeing justice being served."
But on the other hand, she said she saw the convict as a representation of a group of people—including Iryna's own pimp—and her heart ached.
"They are boys who grew up without fathers. There was an absence of godly men in his life who could've poured into him and taught him, 'This is how you live life,' and help him process his pain," Iryna said. "When we send them to jail, it's good, but we're treating the symptom. Unless you go after the root, the symptoms will continue."
Sadler expressed similar thoughts.
"I was sitting there watching him, stone-faced, no emotion, and I was thinking, 'What makes a trafficker? How does someone's life get to this point?'"
She said these questions were the ones that prompted her to launch the Let My People Go movement. The campaign seeks to empower the local church to fight human trafficking by loving the most vulnerable.
This means reaching out to women like Iryna, providing them a safety net and helping them walk into the healing embrace of Christ.
Sadler said churches should also extend their hand not only to the victims but to victimisers as well. "These people are not beyond salvation or the reach of Christ," she said.
