Written by: Christie Wong

Featuring: Clary

In 2016, my family and I lived through a house break-in. One man took me hostage, with a knife to my neck while threatening my parents to keep quiet so the other man could tie them up with cable wires. It was either they stay silent or they would rape and kill me.

They then began to ransack the room for everything: jewellery, bags, watches and family
heirlooms. When they were done with that, they took us downstairs where they forced my dad to disable the house alarm. When they wanted to barge through my grandmother’s door, I begged with all my life for them not to do that as she was too old and her heart wouldn’t be able to take the stress.

After that, the men brought my dad around to raid the other rooms, making sure they could open every safe available and taking what they could. None of us could contact the police because we had all left our phones upstairs. An hour after they left, we finally called the police. Everything became a formal procedure from there. We never knew what happened to the men.

I want people to get to know me first and then what happened because it’s just one of the
many unfortunate things that people can go through, but it shouldn’t be something that defines them. It’s possible to get back up from traumas like that and go on with life. At the very least, that is what I’m doing.