These stories, featured during our anti-trafficking week 2012, are just a reminder of why we do what we do. For those of you who didn’t get a chance to read them on the quad that week, for those of you maybe wondering if IJM is right for you, or even for those who just want a dose of perspective, here are four captivating stories of slaves, their experiences, and their redemption…
“ALISSA”
“It’s like going back to slave times.” These were the haunting words spoken by a young woman called Alissa, who had been trafficked into prostitution at just the young age of sixteen. As if the fact that slavery is still occurring in modern times is not shocking enough, the fact that Alissa was trafficked at a McDonalds in Manhattan should make people cringe. A man had approached Alissa one night and told her all the things an insecure, lonely sophomore girl would have wanted to hear: that she was beautiful, that he loved her, that he wanted to be her boyfriend. After wooing her into a romantic relationship with him, he quickly turned violent. Next thing she realized, Alissa was being sold from pimp to pimp, for roughly $10,000 each time. She was held captive by fear of the pimps, was physically abused, and now years later, and is still constantly reminded by a scar her owner branded upon her cheek with a potato peeler. And yet, as shocking as it is that such horrendous things could go on unnoticed here in America, the phrase used to describe Alissa’s story was fairly typical. Village Voice Media is a U.S. company that owns several websites who sell everything from furniture, auto parts, and, most devastatingly, women. One such website is Backpage, which earns more than $22 million annually from selling women like Alissa for sex. When talking to Alissa years after she was set free, she made it clear she was not angriest at the men who kidnapped, bought, and sold her (although six of them will be in jail for next 25 years). Rather her anger is toward the companies like Village Voice Media that enable the pimps to do what they do. Therefore, her goal, now free, is to stop such companies from experiencing success in their modern day sex slavery industry by first raising awareness through her powerful testimony.
~information from the article “Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods” by Nicholas D. Kristof
“RAMBHO”
It is nine o’clock at night, and you just finished your second, unsatisfactory meal of the day. You have been awake since four that morning but still have a few hours left working at the carpet loom. You dare not get sleepy, for then you may make a mistake and get your hands dipped in boiling oil yet again. You want to escape but your father recently died and your mother and six brothers rely on the income, although in reality you have not seen one cent of your labor thus far. Therefore, you continue to work day in and day out, wondering if someone will ever come to your rescue… Does this sound like some sort of fictional story, tragic movie, or just a really terrible nightmare? It was reality for thirteen-year-old Rambho Kumar for an entire year of his childhood. Sold by his mother to the owner of a carpet loom in India, Rambho worked nineteen-hour days, was beaten frequently, and was never actually paid for his labor. He was promised an education, he was promised a good job, he was promised safety… but he received the exact opposite, without any means of communicating back to his family. Rescued one year after his captivity, Rambho reflects on his time at the carpet loom. His year spent as a slave has motivated him to one day become a guard in his village, making sure children are protected from industries that seek to exploit and enslave them, like this carpet loom. He says, “I won’t let anybody go there even by mistake. I’ll tell them that they hit you and they beat and I would not let them go there ever.” And Rambho certainly has his work cut out for him, for while his nightmare ended happily, there are still over 300,000 children working in the India’s carpet industry alone whose voices have yet to be heard.
~information from freetheslaves.net
“KUTTY”
“I am really scared of him.” Kutty could not use the word “fear” enough in his recent interview with International Justice Mission. After just a few minutes of talking to this rescued rice mill worker, it was clear the tactics his owners used to control him and keep him in slavery at a rice mill in South Asia for more than three years. Fear for his own life, fear for his wife, and fear for his four kids kept him silent and obedient. But his story did not end in fear triumphing: in 2008, a team from International Justice Mission rescued him and his family, and Kutty is now a local government leader in a village in South Asia. His goal? Simple, but powerful: “I want to do good for my people and my village.” This sort of complete transformation is the perfect portrayal of what International Justice Mission hopes to achieve through their efforts, one life at a time. Freedom is not a one time event: rather, as seen in the life of Kutty and his family, setting even one person free from bondage has positive repercussions that will spread to others and can impact entire villages threatened by slavery.
~information from IJM.org
“MEENA”
How far would you go to provide for your family? This is a question that surely was pounding through Meena’s head during her two years as a domestic slave in Lebanon. Married at the age of sixteen, Meena was abandoned by her husband and was forced to go through a “reliable” agent to find a job elsewhere to provide for her newborn daughter. She was sent to Lebanon, although she thought she would be sent to Dubai, and started working in a house for a woman. At first, the job seemed normal and safe enough, and she had high hopes of returning soon to her daughter with money. However, the day finally came when she made a mistake doing a house chore and got slapped twice because of it: this, Meena soon realized, was only the beginning of the longest two years of her life. Her owner soon became extremely violent with her: she would yell at her, starve her, and slap her more frequently. Then things grew even worse: Meena’s owner burned her with cigarettes, shoved her hands down her throat, and eventually drugged her and gave her over to men to be raped and abused. One day, Meena decided she simply could not bear it any longer. She hung a shawl on a fan and contemplated suicide: “either die or escape,” she said were her two choices. And it was the image of her daughter who caused her to choose the latter. She jumped six stories from her room and was found five hours later by a man who helped her get in contact with her parents. Now Meena is back in Nepal, living with her parents and five-year-old daughter, and learning how to live a normal life again. Her biggest desire in life is that her daughter never has to experience the things that she did. True, the scars and the painful memories are still there and will always be there, but Meena is determined to not let her tragic past negatively impact her hopeful future. Meena herself says it best: “I then realized that I am alive again… I don’t have to die in a foreign country… I have hope for living a new life.”
~information from the Passion 2012 documentary
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