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Augustinian Human Trafficking Awareness Campaign

Teens Working the Streets

Trafficking of Orphans (II)

EUROPE (ROMANIA): THE TREATMENT OF ORPHANS

It was late. It was very cold. Across the street in the southeast city limits of Milan there was a teenager in jeans and a tee-shirt. She paced nervously back and forth on the sidewalk. She was stamping her feet on the pavement with her hands tucked underneath her crossed arms. I saw someone like a police officer asking for her papers.

At the end of the conversation I went to talk to the official. She told him her name was Mariana and that she was Romanian. 19 years old. According to him the teenager was not more than 16, even though the date of birth on her passport was 1990. Petite. Short, black hair. Her features suggested a life not yet lived.

The “constable” who stopped the teenager is a 51 year old inspector. He has been working for 20 years in the criminal field: homicide, prostitution, treatment of human persons.

“Since I was 8 years old”, Mariana had told him, “my father came into my bed and made me touch him. When he wasn’t in jail and wasn’t beating my mother, he didn’t stop molesting me. And then, when I was thirteen years old I ended up in a center in Bacau. But the attraction of having some money turned the streets into a necessity for me.”

HOW DO THE GANGS OF MAFIOSI FUNCTION?

It is this “necessity” that ends up in the hands of the Romanian and Albanian “mafias” who organize the trafficking of young people and set them up in prostitution.

Although each group of Mafiosi has its own idiosyncrasies depending on their locations, all use a very similar methodology. The network employs recruiters, sellers, chaperones and exploiters of both sexes.

In these last few years, as we can see on our streets (in Italy), there has been a noticeable increase in the number of Rumanian and Moldavian youth. This is due, among other things, to the ease of movement which their “status” as members of the European community permits. Some existing laws between the two countries permit Moldavians to obtain Romanian documentation.

The same inspector I spoke with mentioned that “the situation has changed”. Romanians are members of the European community. They arrive in Italy in vans or private cars and in small groups.

In Milan they are helped by young women already in the city, under contract with fellow Romanians or Albanians. They provide them with a house, clothes, cell-phones … but the earnings their “protectors” had promised them, are not such, they remain an illusion, a empty promise.

In one night a young woman can make 500 Euros, with rates that can vary from 30 to 70 Euros for services. They get less than 20 per cent of that, some 3,000 Euros a month which, however, is a fortune.

At times, some of the young women are forced to sell themselves during pregnancy and even up until they give birth. And the “minors”? It is usual to recruit from Romanian orphanages and ever more frequent for them to be sent to Swiss, German or Dutch locations, according to our contact.

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

NOTE: This is not just more information, nor anything less. Behind each one of these articles on human trafficking, behind the names and text we write - always behind, because they are unknown to everyone - is the life and the history of a person. Perhaps living in deplorable conditions. Perhaps now deceased … They are human persons who are not as fortunate as we are. Many of them don’t have parents or siblings. They belong to no country. At times, they don’t even have a name. They are materially and spiritually poor. They are destitute. Nonetheless, they are the most loved sons and daughters of God. -- Michael DiGregorio, O.S.A. and Alejandro Moral, O.S.A., 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

       » No One’s Daughters - The Nameless Girls
             Trafficking of orphans in Europe (I)

       » 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.