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When she first showed up at Children of the Night, a privately funded residential facility, Jane was angry. Arrested more than 20 times as a prostitute, she had been hardened by the street. She threw things at her counselors. Everyone was terrified by having to deal with her. She was just afraid. She was used to being treated so rough, said Lois Lee, the Los Angeles groups founder and president. She didnt know what to do with someone nice.
Jane, not her real name, was just 14 when her life was taken over in Seattle by a 36-year-old man who said he loved her and promised to give her a better life. It was an easy sell: She was the product of a troubled home, where she was sexually molested by her fathers roommate. The abuse began when she was 4 years old. She also was molested at the day care center where she was taken every day. My mom was a junkie, Jane, now 17, said in an interview. I lived with my dad. He was up and down with his moods. He had a marijuana addiction. I cant remember much of my childhood. I block it out.
Jane said the molestation made her shy, and when she finally told someone about it her aunt her father turned away from her. I needed his support, but he started to shut down, she said. I figured he didnt care anymore [about me] and so I didnt care anymore. I just started staying away from my house. She ended up with a family friend, a woman who forced her to work as a prostitute and sell drugs. Thats when she met James Jackson, the man she called Jay, who persuaded her to go with him to Portland, Ore. He promised to show her a better life, but moments after they arrived, Jackson told her she had to sell her ass, court records show. When she objected, he choked and punched her until she agreed to be a prostitute. Jane is not the only girl to fall victim to someone she has trusted, but no one really knows how many others there are.
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The buyers were a family that abused her and forced her to work long days cooking, cleaning, caring for two young children and preparing for parties without pay or being allowed to contact her family. I worked from 6 a.m. until midnight or 1 a.m., said Savita, now 15 and freed from her bondage. When a dish burned, she slapped me many times. Id cry for my mother, but the mistress ignored me. A report released Thursday by Australias Walk Free Foundation suggests that Savitas story is a common one, not just in India but worldwide. The 162-nation survey estimated that there are 29.8 million modern-day slaves, and that bondage in some form exists in most countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan and Western European nations.
Although other countries have a greater proportion of their population in bondage, India has by far the largest number, an estimated 13.9 million people. That is more than four times that of the No. 2 country, China, with 2.9 million. Pakistan ranked third, with 2.1 million. Mauritania and Haiti had the highest percentage of the population in bondage, 4 percent and 2 percent, respectively. Modern slavery, the report says, takes many forms, and is known by many names. Whether it is called human trafficking, forced labor, slavery or slavery-like practices ... victims of modern slavery have their freedom denied, and are used and controlled and exploited by another person for profit, sex or the thrill of domination.
In India, much of the traffic in enslaved domestic workers is organized by dubious employment agencies that are virtually unregulated despite a court order requiring the government to set operating guidelines. The placement agencies get all the money, and the poor girl gets nothing, said Rishi Kant, a social activist with Shakti Vahini, the New Delhi-based civic group that rescued Savita. The girls are abused mentally, sexually, physically. Officials dont care, and sometimes even want maids for their own houses, (which is) partly why theyre silent on this.
Nick Grono, Walk Frees chief executive, said by phone that modern-day slavery in India includes children forced into marriages, entire lower-caste communities forced to work in brick kilns or quarries, and people lured by money lenders to assume debts that can last for generations. In the case of enslaved domestic workers, middle- and upper-class families often happily pay as little as $33 a month to disreputable agents for 24/7 help, rather than paying the minimum wage of $125 a month and following other labor laws. The agents often ensure that ties are cut between girls as young as 10 and their families in rural villages. The girls isolation is made worse because they often speak no Hindi, fear the police and are penniless, leaving them little way out of their plight. The family is duped, left thinking one day shell come back with some money, Kant said. And many employing the girls in Delhi are rich, powerful families, so authorities dont enforce the law.
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Called stomach-churning by one commentator, Hindi-language Lakshmi was directed by Nagesh Kukunoor, who also stars in it as a ruthless pimp. He said he was inspired to make the film after meeting a girl, whose real name is not revealed, on a visit to a rescue center on Indias southeastern coast. A 14-year-old forced into prostitution who, when she got away, had the courage to take her traffickers to court and set a precedent was a compelling story, Kukunoor said. When I met her she was 17 and living and working in the rescue center.
The director said the verdict in the girls case was the first of its kind in his home state, Andhra Pradesh, and there have since been more than 100 successful cases of girls bringing their abductors to court in the state. Tens of thousands of children are trafficked within South Asia every year and India has become a hub in the trade of girls for prostitution. Kukunoor said he heard story after story of inhuman behavior from women at the rescue center. In spite of the abuse they had endured, these women were having a normal conversation with me, which was a testimony to their resilience, the director said.
Lakshmi, an independent film that won an audience award at the Palm Springs Film Festival in the US this year, had been certified for adults only when it opened across India on Friday. There is no way to sugarcoat child trafficking and yet I do not show any sexual activity it is implied, Kukunoor said. However, I have made it uncomfortable and disturbing in parts, because we are numb to statistics, and until I met these women I was also desensitized. I needed to serve the story and not sensationalize it, he said.
Social commentator Shobhaa De wrote in a recent column in the Mumbai Mirror that the film was a savage story, savagely told. I could watch just 70 percent of what was being projected in the darkened theater, without throwing up or rushing out of the screening, unable to take any more of the relentless, stomach-churning and exceedingly graphic brutality on screen, she wrote.
?Stomach-churning? film on child trafficking debuts - Taipei Times
UNICEF said 170,000 of those children sought asylum in Europe in 2015-2016, many after making the treacherous trip across the Mediterranean Sea where hundreds of children are estimated to have drowned last year. Nearly 92 percent of the boys and girls arriving by boat in Italy in 2016 and early 2017 came unaccompanied or had been separated from their relatives along the way, the report said. They came mainly from the African nations of Eritrea, Gambia, Nigeria, Egypt and Guinea, UNICEF said. "Ruthless smugglers and traffickers are exploiting their vulnerability for personal gain, helping children to cross borders, only to sell them into slavery and forced prostitution," UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Justin Forsyth said. "It is unconscionable that we are not adequately defending children from these predators."
Those who survived the journeys recounted harrowing stories of abuse along the way, including a 17-year-old girl from Nigeria who told officials that she was raped in Libya by a man who had promised her passage to Europe. UNICEF said the girl spent months in Libya deprived of contact with her family back home until she finally was sent to Italy by boat. Upon arrival, she was rescued from a life of prostitution but she told the U.N. agency her prospects are dire. "Now the people who paid for my trip are saying to my mother, it's time for money," she said. "They say I have run away, and that they paid for my trip and I owe them. They say that if I don't pay, they will put a curse on me to make me be deported."
A 14-year old unaccompanied minor, a migrant from Afghanistan, showers on a cold day near an old train carriage where he and other migrants took refuge in Belgrade, Serbia. More than 300,000 children traveling alone have been recorded in a two-year period, the U.N. children's agency said Wednesday, May 17, 2017 marking a dramatic escalation of a dangerous trend that has forced some young refugees into slavery and prostitution.
UNICEF said the number of recorded children traveling unaccompanied had risen nearly fivefold since 2010-2011, coinciding with a major increase in refugees worldwide. The figure includes only solo children who were registered at a border or as part of an asylum claim and the actual total is believed to be much higher. One-third of the children covered in the report - 100,000 boys and girls - were counted at the U.S.-Mexican border, UNICEF said. Some 90,000 young migrants from the Horn of Africa were displaced either internally or across borders due to conflict in South Sudan and other regional instability. While some of the unaccompanied children are orphans, others are seeking to join relatives who already reached prosperous countries. Other times, relatives believe children "would have a greater chance of being allowed to stay" than adult migrants, the report said.
UNICEF called Wednesday on the countries where children have sought refuge to provide better services, saying many "languish in overcrowded shelters, end up in makeshift camps or are left exposed to the dangers of life on the streets." Unaccompanied migrant and refugee children should not be placed in adult detention facilities and ideally should be in foster care, the report said. In March, Italy's Parliament approved a law setting out comprehensive standards of care for unaccompanied migrant children who arrive in Italy by sea. The law includes a strict prohibition on turning unaccompanied minors away at the border. The law also set a 10-day window for officials to confirm migrant children's identities, with the aim of reducing the amount of time they have to spend in preliminary welcome centers. The law also guarantees them access to health care. Among those hailing its passage at the time were the UNICEF and the humanitarian group Save the Children.
News from The Associated Press
