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Augustinian Human Trafficking Awareness Campaign

No One’s Daughters: The Nameless Girls

Trafficking of Orphans (I)

For some years now, the streets of many important cities of Europe are full of young girls who prostitute themselves, and of older women and children who beg. Where do they come from? Who is responsible for this trafficking in persons? Or, does it have to do with the “trafficking” of the defenseless?.

The source is Romania and other countries close to Eastern Europe. “They look for minors in the institutions of Bucharest and in the poor provinces of Romania … to bring them to our streets. We meet them from Milan to Madrid, from France to Germany. They are forced to prostitute themselves or to beg. Behind this trafficking is a trail of unscrupulous gangs.”

Cristina doesn’t know how to laugh. She never has. Her dark eyes, buried in deep sockets, seem empty of light. She never knew her parents. Now, 17 years old, she cultivates a small garden. She lives in a wooden house with her grandmother, in a small village in the poorest area of Romania.

She feels better than she did a year ago when she was on the street looking for clients. She often remembers with horror the awful period of life in the orphanage in Suceava, not far from the border of the Ukraine. Even now there are 38 orphanages there.Cristina cannot forget the time when some men convinced her to go to Italy as a prostitute in the province of Pescara “ to make a better life for yourself, with lots of money.”

“They sold me to a mixed gang of Romanians and Albanians, for a thousand Euros. I got pregnant and found out I was H.I.V. positive. My child also contracted the virus. Somehow I managed to escape … or, perhaps, they didn’t need me anymore and I was able to return to R omania, where I found out that I had a grandmother. I don’t know how long I have to live, but I want my baby to get well.” (--Michele Focarete, Corriere della Sera, SETTE, 18 February 2010, n.7, p. 3)

A NEW METHOD FOR THE TRAFFICKING OF HUMAN BEINGS

“Deceiving adolescents in orphanages in order to make them prostitute themselves is a new method used by delinquents in the trafficking of persons,” explained Ciprian Nita, director of the International Organization for Migration (I.O.M.), in Romania.

“It is based on psychological vulnerability. These are young women from broken families, without any type of social life and, therefore, very easy to convince. The exploiters need compliant women. These are no one’s daughters, nameless,” he continued.

“To say that they are informed and aware of having to prostitute themselves is only a pretense of traffickers. It is a trap to make it seem that the prostitute is not a human person but an object. But yes, she is a human being,” Nita said.

“How could one think that a young woman of 14 or 15 years of age would agree to such a life? Those who organize the trafficking do not give them any possibility of choosing where to go, how to use their money, when they have to prostitute themselves and to whom they must sell themselves. Nor are they able to decide when to leave the streets. All their rights are violated,” he said.

1300 PERSONS IDENTIFIED AND SAVED BY THE I.O.M.

Here are some telling statistics. In the period from 2001 to 2007, the I.O.M. identified and saved some 1300 persons, all of them victims of the trafficking of human beings.

The span over which these persons suffer dehumanization extends from exploitation in the black market to children destined to be forced to beg, and to the disabled elderly forced as well to beg. Of these, about 1000 were women forced into prostitution, Five per centof those were minors.

FROM THE REGIME OF CEAUSESCU TO THE STREETS OF ITALY, SPAIN, FRANCE …

• 500 orphanages opened in Romania from 1966, under the Communist regime.

• 100,000 orphans housed in state institutes when the Communist regime fell (1989).

• A very high number of current prostitution in the south of Europe originates in the countries of Eastern Europe, especially Romania, from its poorest region, Moldavia, which borders on the independent Republic of the same name. The region is divided into eight districts where the orphanages are found, more than 150 of them, from which flow a significant number of minors forced to prostitute themselves in the aforementioned countries.

--Adapted from a bulletin of the International Augustinian Secretariate for Justice and Peace

More from the Human Trafficking Awareness Campaign

       » Augustinians Launch Human Trafficking Awareness Campaign
             Nature, extent, causes and consequences of the trafficking of people

       » Human Trafficking and Illegal Trafficking of People
             How the two differ, along with some statistics

       » Restavecs: Duplicity in the Trafficking of Children
             Illegal trafficking of children in Haiti 2010

       » Teens Working the Streets
             Trafficking of Orphans in Europe (II)

       » Facing the Influx of Young Immigrants
             How Malta’s Millennium Chapel Ministers to Newly Arrived Youths

       » World Cup Soccer Championship and Exploitation
             The hidden reality behind a major sports event

Additional Resources

       » U.N.O.D.C. on Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling (Opens new window)
             Resources from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

       » Blue Heart Campaign (Opens new window)
             An awareness raising initiative to fight human trafficking and its impact

       » Empowerment Through Knowledge (Opens new window)
             A Web resource for combatting human trafficking

       » Human Trafficking (Opens new window)
             Facts and resources for emergency health care providers

       » International Organization for Migration (Opens new window)
             Promoting international cooperation to help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration

       » Federal Bureal of Investigation: Human Trafficking (Opens new window)
             Human Trafficking in the U. S. A. and how the F. B. I. works to stop it

       » Trafficking in Persons Report 2009: U.S. Department of State (Opens new window)
             Most comprehensive worldwide report on efforts of governments to combat trafficking

       » U.S.C.C.B. Response to Human Trafficking (Opens new window)
             How the Catholic Church combats this modern-day form of slavery

This page offers one of a series of bulletins from the international Augustinian Secretariate for Justice and Peace. It explains some aspects of human trafficking, a pervasive violation of Catholic Christiam morality that has received little attention from news media in the United States.

Human trafficking is sin against human dignity and human life. Christians today are called to be aware of the suffering and harm that human trafficking causes, and to act in support policies and initiatives that will eliminate or reduce this evil. (See Matthew 25: 31-46) The Augustinian Secretariate, committed to assisting Augustinian friars and others in acquiring a greater awareness of the nature, extent, causes and consequences of the trafficking of people, has started a Human Trafficking Awareness Campaign for the years 2009 - 2011.