Exerpt from the Mary Todd Blog

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Rape: The Dilemma of Obtaining Justice, Protecting Rights. and Everyone's Privacy Choices

If you work with trauma victims--individuals who have suffered from sexual assault, battery, kidnapping, etc. You know that there is not just one way that people respond to trauma, and there is not only one right way to assist in recovery.

At Universities, many of the advocacy and counseling issues are complicated by legal issues and administrations' desires to create a safe place for all.
Because of the Post-Event Trauma associated with rape, many victims of this crime choose not to pursue Justice.

They have seen friends being dragged through a legal system that has been perverted (Whores of the Court) (Justice for Some) and have seen the statistics that indicate a poor chance for prosecutions, let alone convictions.

Unlike burglary victims, who are not asked why they had so many pretty things sitting in plain view through the garage windows, or murder victims, who are not asked why they had the gall to show off their vitality, Rape Victims are often asked, in court, why they dressed provokatively or allowed a date to kiss them.
Yes, those questions are being asked in court by the Best Defense Attorneys in 2010.
They have seen parents freak out and boyfriends accuse,
They have decided to spare a sister or brother from the vicarious trauma.
(Many erroneously believe that by pushing the trauma aside, it will go away.)

Some decide that the retaliation they will endure after reporting is not worth the feelings of futility and frustration. When victims have been ordered in court NOT to use the word, "rape" but instead use "sexual intercourse" (!) -- No wonder they assume the worst. Most students i have worked with decided not to pursue legal remedies, either through the campus policies or through the legal system.

Many were informed by police or lawyers that their case would "probably" not be picked up for trial. So in that case-- the perpetrator would be questioned once or twice, enough to let him know who reported him, then the matter would be dropped by officials.
and the crime victim lives on...
( The Kansas City Star had an excellent article about the aftermath:HERE)

So here is the Issue I'd like to hear about and ponder and get your emails and comments:
How do we turn around the reporting issues that surround Sexual Assault?
When women do show great bravery and push for justice, it is usually to "keep the guy from doing it again"--do we think that works?

When will women and men (i do not speak of girls and boys) decide they and their families will have to endure all the pain, and maybe for nothing, in order to change the culture of non-reporting?
Should we hide victims' names?
When will all sexual crime victims feel it is OK to report and be safe afterwards?

Shall we have a national day of reporting?


Here is a dilemma for you:
1. If a student who is raped decides not to pursue legal remedies, and the perpetrator rapes again, is the first victim to blame?

2. If a university employee knows the name of the perpetrator--perhaps the victim told a teacher, or an advocate, or a nurse or a custodial staff friend--and the university does not pursue the perpetrator, even though the victims has expressly said, I Do Not Want To Pursue It-- and the perpetrator rapes another student, is the first victim to blame or is the university to blame?

3. If the victim does say, yes, i want to pursue, through university policies or the legal system, this crime, please help me--and the case is never brought to trial because of lack of evidence, and the rapist rapes again, who is to blame?

4. If the rapist is convicted and he is released and rapes again, is the rehabilitation system to blame?

Keep in mind: Rapists do not rape for sex, but to assuage feelings of inferiority.
Rapists have access to consensual sex. But the act of overpowering,taking, forcing, winning, is what makes rape attractive to this selfish individual. According to the primary researacher of campus sexual assault, most rapists continue to rape until they are stopped. read and watch: (Dr. David Lisak-The Undetected Rapist)

Upcoming Presentation @ the University of Denver

Presentation Given By:

Dana Vaughn-Mgunda, MSSA

Program Director @ University of Denver

Dana.Vaughn-Mgunda@du.edu

GVESS Center

www.du.edu/studentlife/Sexual_Assault

and

Kristen Tebow

B.A. Criminology & Women's Studies @ Kansas State University

Survivor of Human Trafficking

ktebow@ksu.edu

unitedabolition.blogspot.com

American Mothers Political Party

http://www.americanmotherspoliticalparty.org/

AMPP Mission Statement

AMPP is a social movement seeking justice and accountability within the family court system which includes DHHS/CPS, psychologists and other so called experts. We as mothers demand CITIZENSHIP and our Rights to our Children. We demand that our children not be used as pawns by our abuser in a custody dispute. We demand that Mothers and Children be equally protected against court ordered visitation with an abuser. We demand that Mothers and Children be given the same rights, privileges and voice that the abuser gets in family courts! We demand that our President take action now as can no longer afford to be silent and we wont. We demand the same "rights and freedoms" to which all humans are entitled. Behind the closed doors of the dirty little secret of the family court system, thousand of women each year lose child custody to violent men who beat and abuse Mothers and Children. Family courts are not family-friendly and betray the best interests of the child. Until Mothers and Childrens voices are heard we will never shut up, give up or go away!

6 Reasons Why We Need Feminism

1. Studies show women earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn. This pay equity imbalance is currently being addressed by the United States Senate as a result of pressure from feminist groups.

2. Even though women have some legal protections on their equality, the equal rights and protection of women is not defined in the Constitution. Feminists are still pushing for an Equal Rights Amendment.

3. Though women make up more than half of this nation’s population, they are still underrepresented in all elected and judicial positions of national and state governments.

4. Many states are whacking away at women’s reproductive rights. Oklahoma now mandates that all women must look at an ultrasound (they are not legally allowed to CLOSE THEIR EYES!) and be given a pamphlet that says life begins at conception (an issue that is more philosophical than scientific, given the guise of truth because it is handed to her by the doctor). (I personally do not agree that this justifies abortion, but it is still a reason that many women advocate for feminism).

5. Women have a lower body image than men. In many industries, companies can fire (and hire) women based on their physical appearance. More than 9 million women a year have some form of elective cosmetic surgery to enhance their physical appearance. However, this does nothing to correct the psychological issues that cause this intense body hatred (that in fact is rarely addressed in our society). Cosmetic surgery is a multi-billion dollar a year industry that profits from the societal importance of women’s appearance. Men can be considered attractive because of power and wealth while much of women’s attractiveness is defined only by their physical appearance.

6. In the US, a woman is raped every six minutes (according to Amnesty USA). A woman is battered every 15 seconds. This is WAY TOO MUCH! Like, no arguing. And what is anyone doing to really change this? The hyper-sexualization of women and violent masculinization of men is enforced by the media in many ways. Positive heterosexual relationships (and also positive gay relationships) need to be provided as the ideal.

The Web Means the End of Forgetting

Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree. Snyder sued, arguing that the university had violated her First Amendment rights by penalizing her for her (perfectly legal) after-hours behavior. But in 2008, a federal district judge rejected the claim, saying that because Snyder was a public employee whose photo didn’t relate to matters of public concern, her “Drunken Pirate” post was not protected speech.

When historians of the future look back on the perils of the early digital age, Stacy Snyder may well be an icon. The problem she faced is only one example of a challenge that, in big and small ways, is confronting millions of people around the globe: how best to live our lives in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing — where every online photo, status update, Twitter post and blog entry by and about us can be stored forever. With Web sites like LOL Facebook Moments, which collects and shares embarrassing personal revelations from Facebook users, ill-advised photos and online chatter are coming back to haunt people months or years after the fact. Examples are proliferating daily: there was the 16-year-old British girl who was fired from her office job for complaining on Facebook, “I’m so totally bored!!”; there was the 66-year-old Canadian psychotherapist who tried to enter the United States but was turned away at the border — and barred permanently from visiting the country — after a border guard’s Internet search found that the therapist had written an article in a philosophy journal describing his experiments 30 years ago with L.S.D.

According to a recent survey by Microsoft, 75 percent of U.S. recruiters and human-resource professionals report that their companies require them to do online research about candidates, and many use a range of sites when scrutinizing applicants — including search engines, social-networking sites, photo- and video-sharing sites, personal Web sites and blogs, Twitter and online-gaming sites. Seventy percent of U.S. recruiters report that they have rejected candidates because of information found online, like photos and discussion-board conversations and membership in controversial groups.

Technological advances, of course, have often presented new threats to privacy. In 1890, in perhaps the most famous article on privacy ever written, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis complained that because of new technology — like the Kodak camera and the tabloid press — “gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious but has become a trade.” But the mild society gossip of the Gilded Age pales before the volume of revelations contained in the photos, video and chatter on social-media sites and elsewhere across the Internet. Facebook, which surpassed MySpace in 2008 as the largest social-networking site, now has nearly 500 million members, or 22 percent of all Internet users, who spend more than 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Facebook users share more than 25 billion pieces of content each month (including news stories, blog posts and photos), and the average user creates 70 pieces of content a month. There are more than 100 million registered Twitter users, and the Library of Congress recently announced that it will be acquiring — and permanently storing — the entire archive of public Twitter posts since 2006.

In Brandeis’s day — and until recently, in ours — you had to be a celebrity to be gossiped about in public: today all of us are learning to expect the scrutiny that used to be reserved for the famous and the infamous. A 26-year-old Manhattan woman told The New York Times that she was afraid of being tagged in online photos because it might reveal that she wears only two outfits when out on the town — a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt or a basic black dress. “You have movie-star issues,” she said, “and you’re just a person.”

We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.

In a recent book, “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age,” the cyberscholar Viktor Mayer-Schönberger cites Stacy Snyder’s case as a reminder of the importance of “societal forgetting.” By “erasing external memories,” he says in the book, “our society accepts that human beings evolve over time, that we have the capacity to learn from past experiences and adjust our behavior.” In traditional societies, where missteps are observed but not necessarily recorded, the limits of human memory ensure that people’s sins are eventually forgotten. By contrast, Mayer-Schönberger notes, a society in which everything is recorded “will forever tether us to all our past actions, making it impossible, in practice, to escape them.” He concludes that “without some form of forgetting, forgiving becomes a difficult undertaking.”

It’s often said that we live in a permissive era, one with infinite second chances. But the truth is that for a great many people, the permanent memory bank of the Web increasingly means there are no second chances — no opportunities to escape a scarlet letter in your digital past. Now the worst thing you’ve done is often the first thing everyone knows about you.

Article written by Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University. He is writing a book about Louis Brandeis.

Where the Boys Are: Profile of a Male Prostitute

Kaleb is facing the large living room window in his Chicago house, skillfully playing Dvorak on his flute for a small group of houseguests. As he plays, lips pursed, I see the distant relation to Elvis he claims to have. At 23, Kaleb spends his days playing music, listening to opera and frequenting art museums and wineries. He has a flexible work schedule that allows for the Viagra Triangle lifestyle.

Trilling, Kaleb stops abruptly to answer the jewelry-box ring from his phone, he chats comfortably, making plans. “That was my Uncle”, he said with an eyebrow raise,” I’m meeting him at a restaurant to get money later.” F.Y.I: Uncle is the codeword for basically any man who would wants Kaleb by the hour, the restaurant is a cheap hotel room and the money is exactly $150 an hour for an “erotic massage”.

I feel it would be cliche and just tacky to point to Kaleb’s childhood, highlighting abuse. But as we talk he’s so open about it. It is part of him–and it was rough. “I just really focused on music and that’s how I got through it”, Kaleb said with large brown eyes. He won some significant music awards and was accepted to Oberlin, a music conservatory in Ohio that ranks among the top 8 in the country. But didn’t attend because of the expense.

He bounced around and after finding himself homeless with no live family members to turn to, he had to find a way to pay the bills.

Kaleb heard about online escorting sites from “high class women hookers” he knew in L.A. “I found websites and posted ads”, Kaleb said. “The one I chose charges $30 a month for a profile–it is worth it”. He pulls out his laptop. The website has an extensive member list, and breaks up the boys by city. The headlines exclaim that “these boys are eager to please you” with an “erotic massage” What does that even mean?

“it is just a both-partners naked, sensual massage that a lot of times becomes a hand job,” Kaleb says. “If the guy wants me to do oral then I will for $200. But I always use a condom ” he adds. “I have had sex a few times but I don’t like to. There was one man I did enjoy having sex with” he says, getting a bit gushy. “He was a married Puerto Rican Doctor on travel. So hot. He was obviously in the closet and that’s how a lot of clients are.”

Kaleb’s roommate John is a skinny college student. He identifies as a straight man, but adds that he is “just very sexual”. When his search for a job was unsuccessful, the independent 19-year-old decided, why not try what Kaleb was cashing in on? John had never been with a man but dove right in, placing a provocative ad online for a “four hand massage” alongside Kaleb charging $400.

“He was so down“ Kaleb exclaimed. “I was surprised, he treated it just like it was his everyday job.” John says he isn’t scared of the profession because he can get a good sense of the client’s personality by talking to them online and over the phone. “Though, the profession itself is not safe. No one knows where you are when you are in a hotel room with a client” he says.

We talk about how the illegality makes it dangerous. “If it weren’t (illegal) businesses could track where the workers are and run background checks to eliminate rapes and murders” he says. Not to mention, there would be no worry for arrest.

When both Kaleb and John talk about their gigs, they get this energy, giddy, eyes asparkle. There is a sense of enthusiasm about the the mysterious clients, the taboos and a sense of accomplishment in getting them off.

But it is apparent the enthusiasm is not for the sex. “I did an overnight once. I charged $500 and he even bought me stuff and took me out. But just like Vivian Ward, Kaleb doesn’t kiss on the lips. “It isn’t romance” he says “It is straight up sex. I had one guy who wanted it to be sweet and was disappointed when it wasn’t” Kaleb says. “But it is a service, they are paying me” he explains.

Currently, a bill is passing in Illinois that would severely penalize buying and selling sex. The argument used by many groups is that “all prostitution is violence of men against women.” But logically, no one can decide your consent besides you. Especially not the State.

Sex trafficking: An American Problem Too by Bridgette Carr

http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/11/25/carr.human.trafficking/

Ann Arbor, Michigan (CNN) -- "We did not have a right to choose where we lived ... freedom of speech, or freedom of actions. The traffickers had keys to our apartment. They controlled all of our movement and travel. They watched us and listened when we called our parents. They didn't let us make friends or tell anyone anything about ourselves. We couldn't keep any of the money we earned. We couldn't ask anyone for help." -- Lena

Lena was an athletic student from Eastern Europe yearning to visit the United States through a study-abroad program at her college. She had visions of learning English and returning home to share her experiences with her family.

But the human traffickers who ensnared her had a different vision for Lena, shipping her to America and exploiting her in the sex industry for profit. They met her at the airport with news that her study abroad placement had been changed. She was given new bus tickets and sent off to Detroit, Michigan. Once there they took her passport and her freedom.

After almost a year of enslavement, Lena risked her life to make a daring escape. She is smart, resilient and funny, and I have been honored to be her attorney through the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School.

Unfortunately there are thousands of adults and children like Lena who have not been able to escape their traffickers. These victims, especially the children, are in the same position Lena was: They're being exploited and can't ask anyone for help.

The data on human trafficking is sparse, but what is known is terrifying. It's already the second largest criminal industry in the world -- behind only the trade in illegal drugs -- and it's growing fast. The global commercial sex trade exploits one million children annually. At least 100,000 and perhaps as many as 300,000 children in America are victims of sex trafficking each year.

The grim reality of child sex trafficking in the United States is this: Human traffickers are selling sex with children in big cities and small towns throughout America.

Child sex trafficking has been illegal in the United States since 2000 with the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Under this law it is illegal to recruit, harbor, transport, provide or obtain a person under the age of 18 years for the purpose of a commercial sex act. Since the passage of the TVPA many states have passed their own human trafficking laws.

Children who are selling sex in the United States are then, by definition, victims of human trafficking. Despite this, child victims of sex trafficking are frequently viewed as criminals rather than as victims. According to the Department of Justice in 2006, six years after the passage of the TVPA, 1,600 children were arrested for prostitution and commercialized vice.

The children victimized by sex trafficking are often very young. On average, girls are first exploited for commercial sex between the ages of 12 and 14. For boys the average age is even younger -- between 11 and 13.

But being a victim of sex trafficking does not have to be a life sentence. Victims can become survivors and build new lives. And while Lena is no longer the young college student she once was and it is too dangerous for her to return home, her speech and actions are now her own. She can choose where she wants to live. She is free.

Through my work with Lena and other clients in the Human Trafficking Clinic we have identified a number of ways to fight sex trafficking.

Raise awareness within your community: One of the biggest barriers to helping victims of sex trafficking is the lack of awareness about the issue. Human traffickers profit when we think human trafficking only happens in foreign countries.

• Human trafficking happens everywhere, and sex trafficking cases involving children have been found in all regions of the country. No community is immune to the horrors of human trafficking.

• Communities must prioritize the fight against human trafficking -- including providing enough resources to law enforcement.

Change the conversation: Children who by law are too young to consent to having sex obviously cannot consent to selling sex, so:

• Victims should not be described as entering into prostitution; they are being exploited and should be described as victims of human trafficking.

• Law enforcement officials often arrest and detain child victims of sex trafficking on either prostitution charges or other charges, such as truancy or curfew violations. Law enforcement must be trained about human trafficking.

• Sellers of sex, especially when they are children, should not be guilty of a criminal violation. Buyers and pimps should be the only individuals at risk of criminal penalties. This would ensure that no victims are arrested or jailed.

Reduce demand: The reality of sex trafficking must not be neutralized or glamorized.

• Individuals who travel abroad to purchase sex from children are demonized in the media and identified as sexual predators, yet individuals who stay in the United States and pay to have sex with children are given the anonymous title "john" -- and frequently aren't even charged with a crime.

• Individuals who pay for sex with children in the United States should be punished.

Most Perpetrators are Women

United Nations Discovers Most Human Traffic Perpetrators are Women

Thursday, February 12, 2009

UNITED NATIONS — Surprisingly, the perpetrators behind human trafficking around the world are often women, the U.N. reported Thursday.

Women are the majority of traffickers in almost a third of the 155 nations the U.N. surveyed. They accounted for more than 60 percent of the human trafficking convictions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

For many, human trafficking is a world they had been pulled into themselves.

"Women commit crimes against women, and in many cases the victims become the perpetrators," Antonio Maria Costa, director of the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said in an interview. "They become the matrons of the business and they make money. It's like a drug addiction."

Most of the world's nations reported some form of "modern slavery" last year involving mainly the sex trade or forced labor.

And the number of victims should grow as the global financial crisis deepens, Costa said.

The report by Costa's office was based largely on human trafficking convictions reported to the U.N. between September 2007 and July 2008. About 22,500 victims were rescued during that time. About four of every five reported cases involved sexual exploitation; most of the rest involved forced labor.

But Costa's agency gave no overall figures for how many millions of people might be affected. He said most countries' conviction rates for human trafficking rarely exceed 1.5 per 100,000 people.

Two of every five countries covered in the report had not recorded a single conviction from 2007 to 2008.

"Either these countries are blind to the problem or they are ill-equipped to deal with it," Costa said.

"We only see the monster's tail," he said. "How many hundreds of thousands of victims are slaving away in sweatshops, fields, mines, factories, or trapped in domestic servitude? Their numbers will surely swell as the economic crisis deepens the pool of potential victims."

The report's release coincided with the appointment Thursday of Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino as a U.N. goodwill ambassador to help Costa's office fight human trafficking. Sorvino, who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1989 with a degree in Chinese, won an Oscar for best supporting actress in 1995's "Mighty Aphrodite."

"Until a few years ago, I blissfully believed that slavery was a thing of the past. ... Well, obviously I was terribly wrong," she said after Costa draped a blue-ribboned medal around her neck.

Sorvino told how the stories of trafficked children hit her particularly hard since becoming a mother with two young children herself.

"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," she said, repeating a famous statement by Abraham Lincoln, whose 200th birthday was celebrated Thursday.

The report also pointed out that women and girls suffer most from sexual abuse. About 20 percent of victims globally were children, mainly in Southeast Asia's Mekong region and parts of Africa.

Costa, who serves as the U.N.'s chief crime fighter, said it's difficult to get nations to address human trafficking because "it's at the crossroads" of other complex occurrences such as human migration and prostitution.

Sixty-three percent of the nations in the report had adopted some laws against human trafficking. The U.N. said most did so only after its protocol against human trafficking entered into force in December 2003.

Anita's Story

"My name is Anita Sharma Bhattarai. I am 28 years old. I am from Nepal. Last year, my husband took another wife. Soon after, he began to beat me, torment me, and disregard my children. I decided it would be best if I and my children moved out of our home.
I made money by buying vegetables from farmers and selling them in the village market. On November 22, last year, I boarded the bus in order to go pay for my vegetables. I sat next to a Nepali man and woman. They offered me a banana to eat and I took it. Soon after I ate the banana, while I was still on the bus, I got a very bad headache. I told the man and woman that I had a headache and they offered me a pill and a bottle of mineral water to help me swallow the medicine. Immediately, I felt myself becoming groggy and then I fell unconscious.

The next thing that I remember is waking up in the train station in Gorakhpur, India. I am from a mountain village. I did not know what a train was and, of course, I had never been to India. I asked the man where I was. I was confused by the long cars that I was riding and the strange surroundings.

The man told me not to cry out. He informed me that there were drugs (hashish) tied around my waist and that I had just smuggled them across an international border. He told me that if I brought the attention of the police, I would be in trouble for smuggling the drugs. I did not remember the drugs being tied around my waist but I could feel plastic bags under my dress.

The man also told me that if I stayed with him, I would receive 20,000 rupees from the sale of the drugs when we arrived in Bombay. I did not know how to get back to Nepal, I do not speak any of the Indian languages, and I believed that I was already in trouble for carrying drugs. The man told me he was my friend and that I could refer to him as my brother. I decided to stay with him. It was a five-day journey to Bombay by train.

When we got to Bombay, he told me to wait at the train station while he went to sell the drugs. When he returned, he told me that the police had confiscated his drugs and that he did not have any money. He said that I would have to go to his friend’s house and wait while he got us some money. He called his friend on the phone from the train station, and she came to meet us there. She was a Nepali woman. She said her name was Renu Lama. I left the train station with Renu Lama. My “brother” told me that he would meet me at her house at 4 p.m. that afternoon.

As I walked with Renu Lama, she told me not to look at people because she lived in a very dangerous neighborhood and there were some bad people that I should not make eye contact with. When we arrived at her house, Renu Lama told me that I should take a bath. I told her that I would wait until 4 p.m. when my “brother” came because he was carrying my clothes. She told me my “brother” was not coming. I waited until evening but he never came. Finally, I took a bath and Renu Lama gave me some of her old clothes to wear.

Renu Lama then asked if I could write a letter for her. I did. She dictated what she wanted to say to her family, and I wrote the letter. When I had finished writing the letter, Renu Lama took away the ink pen. She went to my room and took away all of the pens, pencils, and paper that I could possibly write with. I realized that the writing of the letter had been a test. Now that they knew I was literate, they were keen to keep me from communicating with anyone outside.

I felt very scared that evening and I refused to eat anything. I soon noticed that many men were coming in and out of the house and I realized it was a brothel. I began howling and shouting. I said that I wanted to leave. Renu Lama told me that I was ignorant. She said that I did not just come easily and I could not go easily. She said that I had been bought and I would have to work as a prostitute in order to pay them back. I was never told how much they had paid for me. Renu Lama and two of her associates told me that all the women in the house were

“sisters” and that we had to support each other. I cried a lot, but they comforted me and brought me a fine dinner, complete with chutney and a pickle.

The next day, though, I insisted that I wanted to leave. The women began to slap me on the face. They cut off my hair. It was shoulder length in the back with short bangs in the front. Now that I had short hair, I knew that I could not leave the brothel without everyone identifying me as a prostitute. In my culture, short hair is the sign of a wild woman.

Then, I was told that all of the women in the brothel had to bathe three or four times each day. The women all bathe nude and they bathed together - four or five girls at a time. I had never bathed nude before and I had never bathed with other naked women. When I expressed my shyness, the other women mocked me. They grabbed me and stripped off my clothes. They forced me to bathe with them.

For the next couple of days the women beat me often. They slapped me on the face and head with their hands and hit me about the waist and thighs with metal rods. I begged to be let go. I said that I wanted to return to my children in time for the biggest holiday of our culture. The women mocked me. They told me that if I worked with them for a couple of days, they would send me home with three bricks of gold and 30 to 40,000 rupees for the festival.

I was also forced to learn Hindi - the language of most of the customers. When I couldn't speak enough Hindi, I was beaten about the waist and thighs with iron rods. When I was alone with one of the other women, I offered her my gold earring if she would let me go. She said no.

Later I learned that three of the women were in the brothel voluntarily and they were in charge. The six other women in the brothel, I learned, had all been tricked and forced like me. Renu Lama and the woman to whom I had offered

my earring were in the brothel voluntarily. All of the women in the brothel were from Nepal. The six who were forced had all been brought from Nepal but under different pretenses. One girl married a man who said he was taking her to Bombay to buy gold. He then left her in a brothel. None of the other girls could read or write. I am literate because I am Brahmin and the women in my community are educated.

The women tried to reassure me that being a prostitute was not that bad. All of my food, housing, and clothes were provided. All I would have to do, they said, was sell my body.

On the fourth day that I was in the brothel, my first client came to me. I refused to have sex with him. He had already paid so he grabbed me and tried to rape me. I fought him off. He had managed to get my clothes off but he was very frustrated because I was resisting him so much. He stormed out and asked for his money back. A couple of the brothel owners (voluntary prostitutes) came in and beat me. When they were done, the same man came back in. I then said that I would have sex with him only if he wore a condom. I knew about the need for condoms since I had learned that some of the other victims had very bad diseases. At first he refused but after another fight he finally agreed. By the time he left he had used three condoms.

I only had one client my first day. But the next day, and everyday after, I had three or four clients each day. I managed to get an ink pen. I would write messages to the police on the inside of cigarette boxes and send them out with my clients. Many clients promised to help but none did.

Still, I was not able to go out to buy the condom myself. In fact, for the entire month-and-a-half that I was in the brothel, I was never allowed to go out into the sun. Some of the other girls got to go to the hospital when they fell ill. But I never got sick, so I could never leave.

I lived on the second floor of the brothel. The six of us who had been brought there against our will were kept on the second floor. There were no windows on our floor. The three who ran the brothel lived downstairs.

Downstairs there was a door that led outside. Several iron rods used for beating were leaned against the wall beside the door. One of the owners always guarded the door. Outside the door was a metal gate. When customers were not coming in and out, the gate was closed. The gate was held by a heavy chain that was locked by a large padlock.

One night I tried to run away with one of my associates. We were caught by the brothel owners before we even made it to the gate. My friend was sold to another brothel in Sarat where the brothels are said to be even more tortuous than the ones in Colaba, Bombay where I was held.

After serving clients for about eight days, an elderly man came to me as a client. When I was alone with him in the room, I told him that he was old enough to be my father. I told him, "I am like your daughter." I told him my story. He said that he had plenty of money and a Nepali friend. He promised to help me escape. He spent the entire night with me. That was the first time I had been with a client for more than an hour. I cried on him all night long.

The next morning, he left with a promise that he would send his Nepali friend to help me. He said that I would know his friend had come when a Nepali man came to the brothel, asking to be with Anita, and carrying a gift of candies.

A few days later, a young Nepali man came to see me. He brought a gift of candy. I told him my story. He promised to help me escape. I told him that I did not trust anyone. In order for me to trust him, he would have to go to Nepal, report about me to my father and brother, and bring back some of my personal photographs as a result. The elderly client paid for him to go to Nepal. Before he left, the boy gave me his address in Bombay.

Some of my associates overheard the owners saying that they were also planning to sell me to a brothel in Sarat because I was too much trouble. I decided that I could not wait until the boy returned from Nepal. I had to try again to run away. I asked some of the other girls to run with me, but they were too afraid. We had been told that we would be killed if we tried to run away. But I had determined that I would rather die than stay in the brothel. The other girls pooled their money together and came up with two hundred rupees. In exchange for the 200 rupees, I promised that if I made it out alive, I would get help for them.

A couple of days later, I had a perfect opportunity. Renu Lama was out of town again. The owner who was watching the gate was drunk. A new maid had just been hired to clean and cook in the brothel. The new maid was doing chores and had left the gate open just a little bit. In the middle of the night, I would guess about 4 a.m., I ran out of the brothel. I was wearing only my nightgown and carrying my slip in my hand. I ran down the street as fast as I could.

As I was running I saw two police officers. There were in civilian clothes but I knew they were police officers by the belts they were wearing. I ran to them, told them my story, and handed them the address of the Nepali boy. They took 100 rupee from me in order to pay for a taxi. The put me in a taxi that took me to the Nepali boy's house.

When I arrived at the house, the Nepali boy was not there. But another Nepali man and his wife were. They were friends of the Nepali boy and they agreed to take me in. The police left me with that family. I did not know it at that time, but that same day, the Nepali boy had met Bob (Robert Mosier, director of investigations, International Justice Mission). He told Bob my story. Soon after I ran away from the brothel, Bob and the police raided the brothel where I had been. After searching the brothel, they learned that I had run away earlier that night. They came with Bob and met me at the house where I was staying.

Bob told me that I could go back to the brothel to get my things. I was too scared to go back because I thought I might be forced to be a prostitute again. But Bob assured me that I was safe. I went back to the brothel with Bob. I showed him hiding places where they found the other girls. All of the girls who were forced were released from the brothel and a way was provided for them to go back home. The two owners who were there that night are now in jail. Bob also arranged for me to return home to my family in Nepal.

When I first went home to my family, it was very uncomfortable. The people in the

village laughed at me. In my culture, a woman is scorned if she is missing for just one night. I had been missing for two months. It was very hard for my family, especially since we are members of the Brahmin caste. So, today I live in Kathmandu. I work as a domestic servant in the city. I am still without my children since they went to live with their father when I was taken away. I am told that my husband's new wife is very cruel to my children, but my husband does not want my children to be with me because of where I have been.

I know that my story will help other women who are forced into prostitution. I am proud that I was able to help Bob free the other girls in the brothel where I worked. Though I am grateful to be here to share my story, I am sad that I am not with my children - that my children cannot be here with me."

- Anita, trafficked in India, originally from Nepal

Special Thanks to: Protection Project and Polaris Project

Website: http://www.protectionproject.org; http://www.polarisproject.org

Alina's Story

"I met my boyfriend at my girl-friend’s house. He had been dating me for a month already when he told me he was going to marry me. My boyfriend told me we could earn some money for our wedding if we went to work in Greece at his friend’s company.

We would stay for three months there to earn enough money and come back. I was extremely happy. I could not believe all that was happening to me. He took my passport and all necessary papers and said that he would take care of visa and travel arrangements. I was so happy and careless that I did not even ask to see the tickets or documents. The day of departure came. We took the plane and instead of Greece we landed in Dubai. As I had not been abroad before I could not really understand where I was. I could only recognize the Arabic signs and people dressed in Arabic robes. When I asked why we landed in Dubai he said we would have to stay for a couple of days in Dubai, and then later we would go to Greece. He took me to a hotel and said that he was going to see his friend and would be back soon. Two hours later a man came to take me to another hotel saying that I was his property. I could not understand, I kept saying that it was a misunderstanding and that my friend would come soon. I had come to Dubai for another purpose. The man told me that my friend had sold me to him, that from now on he would have my documents and I had to do whatever he told me to. He said that the next day I had to move to another place and serve all the clients he would send to me. I was shocked by what was happening. The next day he came and took me to another hotel. He said that every day I had to give him $500, no matter how many clients I would serve. He was so violent. It was a continuous hell. Each day I served around 30 to 40 clients. I was not able to move or think. It went on for weeks. I was living between clients and tears. That was the rhythm of my life. I could not even realize what they wanted from me. The intensity of the process lasted for a couple of weeks. One day I got terribly sick. He left me alone and sent another Armenian woman to visit me. That day I understood that it was an organized enterprise and that there were many women from many countries who shared the same fate.

Meanwhile the pimp refused to give back my passport because of the debts he said he had incurred on account of me. I had to work and earn money if I wanted to go back home. Then he introduced me to another man telling me that he had sold me to him and that I had to take my passport from him. The next day I was beaten like for the first time. He was an extremely cruel man. He came every morning to pick up his money and beat me terribly. I had no right to speak or express my concern, everybody knew him well for his cruelty. I did not receive any money from him. He did not even buy food. It all depended on the client’s will. I was resold four times.

One of my clients was trying to kill me. If it were not for the women in the next room I would have been killed. In his frenzy the man was beating me. He squeezed my throat.

Luckily enough there was a police raid in the hotel where I was working and I was taken together with other women to a police station and detained. My pimp did not do anything to release me from prison. I spent four months there. Though it was prison and the conditions were terrible, it was incomparable with what I had gone through before that. Nobody was cruel or rude to me there and I had to wait while my temporary documents from Armenia and the ticket for deportation were arranged. I came back without any money. All I had before remained with the pimp, I could not pick up anything. The most shameful thing happened at Yerevan airport. Everybody was treating me as if I were a prostitute, saying bad words. My life has changed since that time. Now you see me here in the street. I have become a real prostitute."

- Alina, trafficked in the UAE, originally from Armenia


Special Thanks to: Ex Oriente Lux

Website: http://ex-oriente-lux.org/acc_armenia_01.html


Original Source: IOM. "Trafficking in Women and Children from the Republic of Armenia: A Study" (2001).