Warning: Do not read any further if you are not prepared to be shocked, maybe even moved to respond.
This month I don't have any Christmas pageant stories to tell about. I simply want to talk about our girls and the problem of prostitution. If you also are willing to let God break your heart for the things that break His, please continue…
It seems like each week we hear of another girl who has gone to “work” in Italy or Spain. Many go hoping to make enough money to send home and to make a better life. Others are tricked by pimps and sold and moved in what is a modern form of slavery and a billion dollar industry. One study reported that each year over 6,000 children between the ages of 12 and 16 from Eastern Europe are being sold into sex slavery in Western Europe. The majority are girls, coming from Romania and neighboring Moldova.
In Romanian, human trafficking is sometimes referred to as trafficking carne vie which means “living meat” or “flesh”. Is this what we have come to? Buying and selling the living flesh of the most vulnerable for are own gain and gratification?
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as:
a) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age, or
b) The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion…
Child prostitution is a part of the human trafficking problem that we were made aware of in the wake of last year's tsunami. I am outraged when I read the reports and learn that US citizens alone feed 25% of the child sex tourism industry, according to ECPAT-USA, an organization fighting sexual child abuse.
Sex tourism, brothels, pedophiles, rape, sex slavery, these are the words we use to describe the problem. But do these words really capture the reality of what is going on?
Lust, greed, addiction, distortion, dehumanization, exploitation all resulting in thousands of lives that are scarred, terrorized, beaten, and plagued by guilt, shame, self-loathing, hatred, despair, …suicide.
In an article titled “Exploiting Body and Soul” the author states, “Human dignity is rooted in our relationship to our Creator. Oppression is not only the marring and exploitation of the person but the suppression of the divine image intended to be reflected in that person.”
What will it take to restore all the delicate lives that are being oppressed, destroyed, trampled and forgotten? Who will gently care for these wounded ones and give of their lives to reap life? When will the cycles of lust, abuse, and greed ever end so we can see healthy children become healthy adults?
In another article on the same issue, Chris Keller writes, “When people become a commodity, they are not only an objective function of the global market, but they also become radically temporal – used and soon to be discarded, like other natural resources of the Third World.”
Two year ago, I asked you to pray for a seventeen-year-old girl I know who was on the streets in Galati and left for a life of prostitution in Spain. It turns out she actually went to Poland or the Netherlands, or both. It's hard to get the story straight when so many lies are involved. But what does it matter where? This girl is still trapped in a life of prostitution and she is only one of many who have been sucked into the same trap.
One year ago I had the opportunity to meet and visit with some girls who prostitute in the red light district of Calcutta called Sonagachi. That short afternoon visit to a brothel left an indelible mark on me as I got a small glimpse into the lives of several girls who live there.
I look out my window here in Galati and wonder how many girls will be forced to have sex tonight in this city. How many girls will offer their already used bodies to any man, just for a little money and do the same thing again tomorrow. How many girls in this city actually know their value, their worth, their beauty? Do they know they are loved, truly, purely and completely by a God who calls out to them in the dark, “My daughter, come to me and you will find life, you will be healed”?
And how will we respond? How would Jesus respond?
I think of Jesus' dialogue with the Samaritan woman at the well, the one who had had five husbands. I also think of the night Jesus' feet were anointed by a woman who, the Pharisees informed him, was a sinner.
There is no simple response to such a complex issue as prostitution and human trafficking. But the only thing we cannot do is stand by unconcerned.
Please pray with me to know how to respond. And pray for the girls I come into contact with who have already tasted a life of prostitution, or who suffer abuse from their families and boyfriends.
This year I will be focusing more on relationships with the girls that come to Casa Vale, our Drop-In Center. Although I do not work directly with women who prostitute, I know that many of the girls have been sexually abused. And I consider some of them at risk for being pulled into prostitution. Most of them do not have supportive family and friends encouraging them to finish their education and make healthy choices. Please pray for God to give me wisdom and guidance and unconditional love as I seek to befriend, serve and find ways to meet the needs of these beautiful young women.
Thanks for opening your hearts to offer healing to theirs.
Love,
Rachel