It started with €233 borrowed to pay household bills but soon ended in a vortex that sucked a mother of three into the ugly world of usury.
In an interview with The Times, the mother recounts how she was abandoned by her children’s father, which forced her to seek financial help elsewhere.
But in the merciless world of loan sharks the mother was pushed to despair and even attempted suicide when her children were threatened.
With the help of the Caritas usury victim support groupshe is trying to build a new life.
However, leaving the past behind is not easy and she has avoided eviction from her apartment after readers of this newspaper responded generously to an appeal for help.
Last month Fr John Avellino, who heads the Caritas group, wrote on behalf of the mother asking for €600 to be able to pay rent arrears.
Some 40 people responded to the call and €3,000 were collected, which also helped settle other bills. The mother’s life is now slowly returning to normality. He said: “She is completely dedicated to her children.”
The following is the full interview:
RC believed it was the perfect life when she moved in with a work colleague – 22 years her senior – who promised her the world.
She was still 20 at the time and little did it bother her that the man was separated and had three children.
What mattered most was his affection.
But the young woman’s dream to eventually get married was shattered when the man, who fathered her own three children, turned out to be a miser and uninterested in obtaining an annulment from his first wife.
The relationship lasted six years and with little financial support from her partner, RC was forced to knock on other people’s doors for help.
Not all doors opened but the few that did led her into a dark vortex of loan sharks, which eventually pushed her into despair and an attempted suicide.
“I was desperate and tired,” she says while sitting at the kitchen table of the apartment where she lives with herchildren in the south.
“I love my children and I thought they would be better without me.”
The words are laden with a mother’s sense of guilt. RC is now 36 years old but as she struggles to open the lid on her past, she admits feeling “like 100”.
“I would borrow money to pay a bill of Lm100 (€233) and the following week my debt would shoot up to Lm150.
“At one point I was even paying interest at Lm50 per day, borrowing money from other loan sharks to pay the previous month’s debts.”
The spiral was never ending and in the shady world of usury, failure to meet payment deadlines can become an ugly affair.
She had to put up with death threats against her children, shady characters lurking outside her apartment and vulgar phone calls.
When the doorbell rings, her children still shudder. It is for this reason that RC asks to remain anonymous as she fidgets with her fingers.
“I never told the truth and my family never realised what I had got myself into until I ended up in hospital,” she says.
Telling the truth is hard and even when RC started attending the Caritas usury victim support group, she would only admit to a fragment of the debt incurred.
With the help of Fr John Avellino, who heads the Caritas group, RC has not incurred new debts for more than a year now. And she is slowly repaying back some of those dues.
She leads “a normal life”, which by her standards is the ability to live safely with her children.
Last month, Fr Avellino wrote a letter to The Times on her behalf asking for financial assistance because RC was threatened with eviction from her rented apartment. She failed to pay the rent because of financial constraints and racked up a pending bill of €600.
Sitting at the same table, Fr Avellino says that some 40 people answered the call for help and €3,000 were collected. “The rent arrears were paid as were other pending expenses,” he says, expressing gratitude for the generosity shown by complete strangers.
“RC acknowledges she made mistakes in the past but is firmly resolved to look ahead and give her children a solid future and a sound education,” Fr Avellino says.
RC smiles and thanks the priest. She says her children are also grateful to people like Fr Avellino.
RC lives on social services but does the odd menial job, and the boss where she sometimes works has also pitched in to help the family.
RC recalls the day when she was desperate for money to be able to afford the school lunch for her children. The boss realised and told her to go on a shopping spree at the supermarket.
“My children were so happy that day. We had never gone on a shopping spree for groceries. We ate for two whole months,” she says with a smile.
With an ugly past and a difficult present RC is hopeful her children will have a better future. But it is not an easy road.
The government school her children attend is organising a school outing and transport comes at a nominal €2 cost.
It may not appear much but for a woman trying to make ends meet every euro in additional expenses is a euro too much. She sometimes does not send her children to school outings.
RC picks up another paper. It is a government form to apply for rent subsidy but simply submitting the request comes at a cost of €30. “The application will have to wait until next month,” she says.
RC believes God gave her a second chance when she lived after trying to take her life away. She is still young but does not wish for much in life. “All I want is for my children not to go through what I went through.”
They are a mother’s words, after all.
ksansone@timesofmalta.com