Star Trek: 10 Disturbing Side Character Backstories
5. Ro Laren
Long before Ro Laren served aboard the Enterprise-D and eventually defected to join the Maquis, she was one of the many Bajoran children displaced by the Cardassian occupation of Bajor.
As a child, she was forced out of her home and sent to a refugee camp on Valo II where she lived in constant fear and rarely had a bed to sleep on. Her father was the only one who could sooth her fear, but in 2347, a Cardassian led her into a secluded room with a piece of candy, where her father was sat, trapped. She was forced to watch the Cardassian question and torture her father for hours until he died.
It was this trauma in her early life that led Ro Laren, and many other Bajorans hurt by the occupation, to take up arms against the Cardassians and Starfleet bureaucracy. Laren was upset that she betrayed Picard's trust by joining the Maquis in the episode Preemptive Strike, but she saw it as the only way to effectively fight the Cardassians.