Kidnapped and Trafficked

I've recently come to the conclusion that one reason why people may not care as deeply as I do about the less fortunate of this world is be/c they aren't aware of the daily struggles and trials these people face. So I am going to try my hardest to blog very often (I'd love to do everyday but if not every other day) and educate anyone reading.

A couple months ago I read the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. I couldn't put this book down. As saddening as it was, I found it very interesting.

Meena was eight or nine years old when she was kidnapped and trafficked. She is from a poor family on the Nepal border and was sold to a Nutt clan. The Nutt clan are a low-caste tribe that controls the local sex trade in impoverished northern India. The Nutt have traditionally engaged in prostitution and petty crime, and theirs is the world of intergenerational prostitution, in which mothers sell sex and raise their daughters to do the same.

After Meena was kidnapped she was taken to a rural house where the brothel owner kept prepubescent girls until they were mature enough to attract customers. She remembers she was twelve when she was taken to the brothel, five months before her first period. Meena's first client paid lots of money to have sex with her but she fought him and started crying out so he wouldn't succeed. She resisted so much the brothel had to return his money to him. Due to this, the brothel owners beat her mercilessly, with a belt, sticks, and iron rods. "The beating was tremendous" Meena says. However she still resisted. They showed her swords and said they would kill her if she didn't agree. The brothel owners tried four or five more times and Meena still resisted until they resorted to drugging her and then raping her. When she woke she was hungover and hurting and she realized what had happened. "Now I am wasted," she thought, and so she gave in and stopped fighting customers.

The brothel Meena was in, the tyrant was the family matriarch, Ainul Bibi. Sometimes Ainul would beat the girls herself, and sometimes she would delegate the task to her daughter-in-law or to her sons, who were brutal in inflicting punishment. Meena remembers she wasn't even allowed to cry. "If even one tear fell, they would beat me. I used to think that it was better to die than live like this. Once I jumped from the balcony, but nothing happened. I didn't even break a leg."

For Meena her life consisted of ten or more customers a day, seven days a week and never getting paid. She was never allowed to leave the brothel and if she complained of a stomachache she would be beaten. If a girl showed any kind of resistance, all the girls would be summoned to watch as the recalcitrant one was tied up and savagely beaten. "They turned the stereo up loud to cover the screams," Meena said dryly.

No one uses condoms in Meena's brothel and so far she is healthly, however she has never been tested for HIV/AIDS. HIV prevalence is low in India but for prostitutes this is still dangerous, since they have so many customers. Meena did however get pregnant twice and had her children taken away from her so she wouldn't flee. Brothel owners don't mind their prostitutes having children be/c they can breed a new generation of victims. The boys will become servants, doing laundry and cooking.

Ainul was even a prostitute when she was young and has no sympathy for the younger girls. "If my own daughters can be prostituted, then you can be, too," Ainul would tell the girls. Yes, even her own daughters were prostituted by their own mom! "They had to be beaten up to agree to it," Meena explained. "No one wants to go into this."

Meena estimates that in the dozen years she was in the brothel, she was beaten on average five days a week. Most girls were quickly broken and cowed, but Meena never quite gave in.

For us the police are someone we can turn to for help but not in India. Meena was so desperate for help, she slipped out and went to the police station to demand help. Instead of helping her, they mocked her and sent her back to the brothel after they extracted a promise from the brothel owner not to beat her. They didn't immediately punish her but a neighbor told her the owners had decided to murder her. This doesn't happen often but if a prostitute has become nettlesome enough , the owners will kill her as a warning to the girls.

Meena feared for her life and abandoned her children and fled the brothel.

To Be Continued.......