Danguolė
Rasalaitė

Danguolė was born in Telšiai in 1983 and grew up in Kaunas. Her childhood wasn't an easy one. Her father spent time in prison, and her mother remarried more than once before deciding to build a new life in the United States, which meant years of Danguolė being passed between relatives while she waited to be sent for. A stint living with her sister in Germany didn't go well. She drifted between schools, then dropped out altogether, and by the time she was a teenager her family had largely lost touch with her.

In the autumn of 1999, her boyfriend at the time told her about a job on a farm outside Malmö, Sweden. She didn't have a passport of her own, so she borrowed one from a friend and flew out on 17 November 1999. Someone met her at the airport and took her to an apartment in Arlöv. Her passport was taken from her that same day, and she was told she'd have to work off the cost of her flight, about 20,000 kronor, through prostitution. She was beaten when she resisted, and the apartment stayed locked.

After about a month, she managed to escape through a window. She didn't get far. In the days that followed she was assaulted again, this time by a man who'd offered her somewhere to stay, and his friends. On 6 January 2000, she was found badly injured beneath a road bridge in Malmö. She never regained consciousness, and died in hospital four days later, on 10 January 2000. She was sixteen.

In the apartment where she'd been held, police later found three letters Danguolė had written to friends back home in Lithuania, letters that made clear she felt betrayed by someone she'd trusted. Two years later, Lukas Moodysson released Lilya 4-ever, drawing loosely on her story. The following year, Swedish journalists told her real story directly, in the documentary Lilja 4 real. This page exists so her own name is remembered too, not only the name of the character she inspired.