Is this woman partly to blame for my friend's suicide?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eesti/comme...or_my_friends/
Triin, my dear Estonian friend, committed suicide in January 2025. This was partly triggered by a traumatic experience Triin endured, having been exploited by her (then) friend, Sanne Pärn. Back when Triin and Sanne were both in their early 20s, they both left Tallinn, and set off on an adventure to work and adventure in Thailand. Triin flourished, getting a well paid English teaching job, living in a lovely skyscraper condo, and overall having a good time. However Sanne was the opposite as she completely failed to manage her own life in Thailand.
As a tall pretty white woman, it was easy for Sanne to land modelling auditions, in Bangkok. Despite this, she managed to completely mess things up by angering the modelling agencies, photographers, directors etc until she was eventually black-listed. She did this by constantly putting everyone else around her down, to show how morally, intellectually, and culturally superior she was. She would start every 3rd sentence with “as a feminist” or “as a vegan” even if it had no bearing on the context of the subject. Sanne, lectured Thai “ladyboys” on how they shouldn’t call themselves “ladyboys” because it’s “trans-phobic”. Sanne even had the nerve to walk up to a prostitute and tell her that “by working as a prostitute you are degrading women everywhere. You are an insult to feminism. Don’t you know that your actions are just helping the patriarchy?” The prostitute just looked at Sanne and smacked her so hard Sanne stumbled over a chair and fell on her ass. She once even got thrown out of a (slow) moving taxi because she started scolding the taxi driver for eating meat in his own car. Sanne was always trying to force everyone (including Thais) to adhere to Sanne’s Eurocentric, far left, world views. They might have been accepted in Europe, but they don’t work so well in Thailand. Anyone who has lived in Thailand can tell you that.
Anyhow, within a few months, she had lost all her prospects for employment in Bangkok. Simultaneously, Sanne burned through all her savings through excessive partying. When Sanne went broke, she started pressuring T to bail her out financially. Sanne frequently threatened to kill herself if Triin refused. Triin being a bleeding heart who always tended to her friends, ended paying for both of them. However, Triin’s teaching gig could not cover the costs of Sanne’s party lifestyle. Triin started taking side gigs in order to make ends meet, feeling she had no other choice. Eventually, Triin started working as a freelance prostitute. As this paid a lot better than her teaching job, she quit teaching and focused exclusively on escorting. That lifestyle also involved lots of drinking and drug use, as her clients expected her to join them with that. Within a few months, Triin had gotten addicted to synthetic drugs. Her life spiralled out of control, as she needed to keep escorting in order to support both Sanne, but also her own new drug habit. Throughout all this, Sanne would constantly lecture Triin about what a terrible person Triin was for becoming a prostitute. Triin would brush it off when Sanne was around, but when Sanne was gone, she’d often cry about it.
Triin didn’t want to go back to Estonia either since she didn’t want her family and friends to know what what a mess her life had become. At the same time, Triin felt she was unable to get sober on her on her own and without a support network.
Triin never wanted me to intervene in her life, she was quite strict with me about that. She even made me promise not to tell anyone about her struggles. However, when I saw how bad her situation was getting, I eventually broke that promise and notified her family. They were devastated, and forced T to return to Estonia, where she was placed into rehab. Triin felt I had betrayed her trust, so she didn’t talk to me for a while. Eventually Triin forgave me as she understood that I meant well by involving her family.
Sanne left Thailand shortly after Triin did, as she had nobody left to support her, and she was not about to become a prostitute herself. She just wanted to take money from sex workers, while lecturing them about the sins of sex work. Triin suffered major trauma as a result of her experience exploited into prostitution by Sanne. Triin struggled with sobriety and a depression, but tried her best to get control of it. She worked at well established fintech companies, was doing really well for herself, but internally, privately, she still felt great shame. She saw therapists, and sometimes talked to her close friends about how she was really feeling, but for the most part, appeared to getting better. Unfortunately, she was not, and ended up killing herself January of this year.
Many people knew her in Tallinn and Tartu. For years she was always the life of the party, the energy that brought so many people together. A reliable and solid friend who helped many people get jobs at fintech companies. She helped people find apartments, was a shoulder to cry on, even in the middle of the night when she had work the next day, someone who made anyone and everyone feel welcome. Losing Triin created such a void in so many of her friends’ lives, both in Estonia and abroad.
For years, I have wanted to go public with what Sanne had done, but Triin didn’t want me to. Triin was afraid that Sanne would publicly shame Triin over what she endured in Thailand, and that everybody would judge her for that. However, I learned at Triin’s funeral, that all her friends already knew, and that nobody thought worse of Triin for it. With this in mind, I would like to give her some justice for what she had to suffer, so I’ve decided to share her story here.
