'I was sold into child sex slavery by my mother. I was just six-years-old.'

Trigger warning: This post contains an account of child sexual abuse which may be distressing for some readers. 

It wasn’t until Anneke Lucas was 25 that memories of her childhood as a sex slave began to creep back.

The Belgian native was walking down the street in Los Angeles when the wafting smell of human faeces triggered a disturbing memory from her past.

“My instant thought was: ‘If this is true, I’m going to kill myself.'” she wrote in a detailed account of her experience, which she shared on social action platform Global Citizen as part of their ‘Real Women, Real Stories’ project.

It was 1988 at the time, but it took many more years for the abuse to survivor to understand the full extent of her trauma, let alone articulate it.

For five years Lucas, now 53, claims she endured life in a paedophile ring run by Europe’s elite.

"My mother sold me, and drove me wherever, whenever she got the call. The boss of this paedophile network was a Belgian cabinet minister. The clients were members of the elite. I recognised people from television. Their faces were familiar to the masses, while I was confronted with the dark side of their power addiction — the side no one would believe existed. I came across VIP's, European heads of state, and even a member of a royal family," she wrote.

Lucas believes she was raped more than 1700 times and experienced her first orgy at just six-years-old.

She says she was routinely humiliated in S&M shows, where she was once chained up like a dog and made to eat human faeces.

After one of the shows, "left lying there like a broken object", she finally decided to confront her abusers.

"I raised myself up, and stood looking at the bizarre crowd of aristocrats dressed up as hippies, swaying to the music in various levels of sexual interaction, busily availing themselves of little pills and pre-rolled joints passed around on silver trays by sober waiters," she wrote for the Global Citizen.

"I trembled in fear, but my body straightened and stilled itself like a bow in suspense before the shot, and I heard my voice as though it were not my own, chiding the adults, telling them that this was wrong - that I was going to tell on them, and that they would all go to jail."

Lucas says she was them taken to a cellar where, at first, she thought she would be killed.

Instead, she says she was shown the body of another young murder victim; a threat to ensure her silence.

At school, she described herself as a shy "nonentity", while at home she says she was ignored.

It was only in the network that she received any positive attention at all, which she eventually began to rely on.

"It felt good to be viewed as the most perfectly beautiful, sensual object by powerful men with high standards in taste," she said.

"This was the only positive in my life, and I clung to it as my only raft to keep from drowning in a sea of shame and self-loathing."

WATCH: Anneke Lucas' shares her story on Global Citizen.

Her ordeal ended after a year-long interaction with the 20-year-old son of one of the group's members, "in which I would feel more than ever loved, seen, and understood, and would be more than ever abused".

Despite having taken part in her abuse, the young man eventually traded his services for her life, when she was tortured and threatened with murder.

While Lucas says she still suffers from PTSD, she has spent many years healing herself and in 2014 founded of Liberation Prison Yoga.

She is also mother to a 15-year-old daughter.

"Power addicts, world leaders, and corrupt politicians who abuse children are themselves like children who never grew up, driven to power to avoid ever feeling the humiliation of child abuse again, unconsciously seeking revenge from a place of hurt by recycling the abuse. They lack the courage to heal," she said.

"Those of us who have suffered sexual abuse, incest or sex trafficking need to learn to harness our survival strength on our own behalf, so we can heal our damaged ego, and channel that strength to lead the way towards a future in which former victims conquer by love, understanding and compassion for all."

You can read Anneke's full account as part of the "Real Women, Real Stories" project by Global Citizen.

If this post or any of the comments bring up any issues for you, or if you need to speak to someone please call 1800-RESPECT or the NSW Rape Crisis Centre on 1800 424 017. It does not matter where about you live in Australia, they will take your call and, if need be, refer you to a service closer to home.