Three
stories
of
child
trafficking
T. is classically pretty with
curly black hair and a wide grin. Her mother worries
because a young girl like T. should not live on the
streets. But then, the whole family does. Mother, father
and five children from T at 13 to the littlest girl at 4.
There are two more older siblings, but they were left at a
shelter a while ago, and the family isn’t sure where they
are anymore.
They had a shack near the riverside once, but the slums
were cleared to build a mall. Every family got a bucket,
some tarpaulin for a tent, rice and about $10 to start over
again.
T’s family couldn’t move to the new settlement, over an
hour from town. Her parents work as scrap-food collectors.
They go from restaurant to restaurant getting rotting left
overs to sell to farmers. The hours are long and they had
nowhere to leave the children while they worked.
They searched for another place to rent, but the slum
clearence meant places were scarce. No-one respectable
wanted them as neighbours because of the family’s smelly
job.
They gave up and began sleeping on the sidewalk, setting up
the tarp as a tent each night. The children huddled
together for protection.
When Weekly Boarding began, T and her brothers and sisters
joined quickly.
Their parents drop them off on Monday morning, as clean as
they can get them with the public taps, a little bit of
money for their daily state school fees, and lots of hugs.
T comforts her little sister who cries for her mother
before the other children start distracting her with toys
and games.
T. goes back every weekend with her parents. They are a
close and loving family, at-risk because of their extreme
poverty and homelessness. She came back last month with
typhoid.
Without Riverkids, she would have simply gotten sicker and
sicker, her family relying on hope and what little they
could manage for medicine. Riverkids got her treated and
made sure she had plenty of rest and good food. She’s
glowing with health again and her family is not plunged
into a financial crisis and forced even closer to desperate
acts.
For families like T’s, there is no safety net. Even the
most loving parent can be forced to choose between selling
one child and feeding the others.
Riverkids provide that safety net. Riverkids does more -
through education and family programs, we help families
make their own safety nets, giving them more choices than
child trafficking.
When
family
is
the
problem
N looks fragile. She has
perfectly straight shiny black hair, neatly cut and when
she smiles, all her teeth gleam. But years of malnutrition
show in her delicate frame. She was a bright curious little
girl once, but her parents’ divorce and an abusive new
stepfather have turned her into a quiet and cautious child.
Her big brother, B, is alternately tender and protective to
his little sister, then suddenly violent - copying what he
has seen and lashing out with all the hurt contained in his
silent 10-year-old self. He dropped down at school during
the worst of the abuse, but since they started Weekly
Boarding at Riverkids, he’s caught back up near the top of
his class.
N wears pretty gold earrings. B has good shoes. Compared to
other families in Riverkids, they should be lucky. But they
don’t have what every child needs most: loving protective
parents.
Their mother is a trafficker. She sells fish in the markets
but that’s a cover for where the money really comes from.
She’s the contact person for young women coming from
Vietnam, for arranging a steady supply to the brothels in
Phnom Penh. She’s not a major criminal and the police
haven’t been able to charge her yet. She says all she does
is get girls ‘jobs’. She’s helped sell one of her older
children to a brothel in Malaysia and two of her
grandchildren have been sold as infants in Cambodia, one
rescued as she was about to be smuggled abroad and sold.
So B and N find shelter with Riverkids from Monday to
Saturday. Our social worker visits their parents to counsel
and warn them. If we’re too strict, they will take B and N
and simply vanish; too leniant and B. and N. suffer. There
are few legal recourses and for B and N, the stark truth is
that, like most abused children, they love their parents.
We make sure these two children get a chance at school,
healthy regular meals, playtime and encouragement. We make
sure they can’t be sold without someone to stand and
protect them.
Turning
young
girls
into
prostitutes
Two of our best students were
removed abruptly from school and placed by their parents at
a coffeeshop near a notorious hotel-brothel and another
trafficking point, purportedly to work. Repeated visits and
investigations by Riverkids and another anti-trafficking
NGO have revealed that both sets of parents owe debts to
the coffeeshop owner. Debts that are being paid off by the
two girls, 14 and 15, as they are slowly ‘groomed’ into sex
work. These girls were just beginning to flirt shyly with
other schoolboys, mostly concentrating on their studies.
They were our most well-behaved and gentle girls.
Now they’re learning to wear make-up, talk to strange men,
work alongside other older girls who have already given up,
luring them in. Their futures have been sold for a few
hundred dollars. When they break under family pressure and
become prostitutes, their owners will say they
‘volunteered’.
Riverkids
will
be
there
for
them.
Thanks
to
you.