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Nadine is a young girl aged 14. Her dad passed away when she was only 8 and her mother who struggled with drugs and prostitution used to pay her neighbors in order to keep her at their place for the whole day. One day, Nadine's mother didn't come back to pick her up. It was not long before they learned that Nadine's mother was incarcerated and sentenced to life. The only family Nadine had left was her younger brother, aged 12, and the nice lady, that we shall call "B", who took her in while her mother was nowhere to be found. With all these saddening events, the worse was yet to come as B.'s husband was becoming more and more abusive with Nadine and on one unfortunate night, the husband abused her sexually and repeatedly. The abuse led Nadine to flee far far away from home and seek shelter in the closest police station. Nadine was then referred to himaya where she arrived utterly confused and had no recollection of why and how she got here. It was clear to see that the abuse and trauma she had suffered from severely affected her memory as well as her physical and mental state. When asked about her age or about her birthday, Nadine had no answer. Like a little girl stuck in a shell scared and eager to come out at the same time. Today and with a lot of efforts Nadine is speaking out about her past experiences and struggles. She recognizes that it is a long process and the multidisciplinary team of himaya's Resilience center accompanies her every step towards rebuilding what was once broken and stolen from her. Despite of all this hardship, Nadine has big dreams for the future, the first step being to get her technical diploma in cooking and finding the right place for an internship. himaya might have found the next Master Chef!
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