child prostitution | Walking By Faith in Europe

Part Two

Moldova is the poorest country in Europe, and poverty means vulnerability. Sometimes, as noted in yesterday’s post, a family will either abort or abandon children that they can’t afford to keep. So Moldova’s orphanages are filled with children who are not truly orphans, but are simply abandoned. Being the poorest country in Europe, and having the responsibility for so many orphans means that the orphanages cannot do more than simply keep their little charges alive. When an orphan reaches the age of eighteen, they are given a small amount of money and a bus ticket to the nearest city. Traffickers know this and often cruise the bus stops by the orphanages looking for young girls to whisk away into a life of prostitution. And, having no other life skills, they really have no other alternative.

Sometimes, in exchange for money, the orphanage directors will cooperate with the traffickers by letting them know when girls will be released. And sometimes, the orphanage directors, themselves, become traffickers, opening the orphanage as a child brothel, and selling the girls into a life of prostitution when they are released.

Rescuing these girls from prostitution is the focus of several ministries here in Moldova. In Trans Istria we saw the construction site of a church that wants to house girls, teach them life skills and job skills, and help get them started into a better life. The church doesn’t currently have enough money to finish the building project, so they are using the help of missionaries who come as volunteer help. Even if you are not skilled in construction, but you want to help, any extra pair of hands is very gratefully put to work in various ways, and for whatever length of time you can come. You can contact us through the GoMissions website for more information.

Our visit yesterday to Irena and Olga, the mother and daughter team that works in the Pregnancy Crisis Center in Chisinau is another organization that helps these at-risk girls. Orphans and the rescue of prostitutes is not the primary focus.

Stella’s Voice is a ministry based in the UK that also rescues at-risk girls. You can contact them on their website for ways that you can help their ministry help these girls.

Traditionally, law enforcement (worldwide) has jailed and prosecuted the prostitutes, themselves. But the fact is that few prostitutes choose that lifestyle. The ones who do choose to go into prostitution have all been molested as children, so that they have come to believe that it is only through sex that they have value. Therefore, it is not only wrong to jail prostitutes, but also a waste of resources, since it only effects the supply in a very small way without diminishing the demand at all.

The only country in the world that has been able to drastically reduce prostitution (by 80 percent) is Sweden. Instead of prosecuting the prostitutes, Sweden prosecutes the johns—and does so publicly. In fact, anyone traveling to, from, or through Sweden for the purpose of buying the services of prostitutes (sex tourism) is jailed and denounced in the Swedish media.

Unfortunately, Moldova is far too poor to address the problem of prostitution at all. But the western countries to which these girls are trafficked do have the resources. Any country that really wants to help these girls, or at the very least to stop prostitution within their borders, should follow the Swedish model. I suspect that the problem is that most politicians don’t care about prostitutes and/or the police are in some way involved (financially or by receiving favors). My criticism is not limited to the countries of Western Europe, but worldwide, including my own. It is within the power of our government to stop prostitution. But do they want to. America, do you want to stop prostitution?

When Clara (the pastor’s wife and my hostess) tells me the ugly truths about life in Romania her voice and face are drained of all emotion, while mine are breaking up from emotions that can’t be contained. That is how she told me about Sandy. Clara and Leo have four children, and care for two other girls. I had met one of them, Ruth, last year. Ruth’s parents left her with her grandmother while they were divorcing. When each parent re-married, neither wanted Ruth, so she stayed with her grandmother until the grandmother’s death. At the time of the grandmother’s death, Ruth was six years old, and both parents had children with their new spouses. Clara and Leo took her in. The parents visit Ruth periodically, but Clara and Leo have legal guardianship of her.

When I heard Ruth’s story last year, I wondered how heartless people could be toward their own child—until this morning when I heard Sandy’s story. Clara and Leo took Sandy into their home on weekends two years ago after her mother died and her father left her with her grandmother. Clara asked about the mother’s death and learned that she had been forced into prostitution by her husband, and had died after a few years. She didn’t say what she had died of, but considering all the risks of prostitution it could be anything: AIDS or another STD, a drug overdose, murder, or suicide. Clara didn’t say, but it really doesn’t matter, it was a result of prostitution.

When she saw the look on my face, Clara said, “I don’t know if he tried to get work or just wanted the easy way.” I marveled at her refusal to judge a man who had prostituted the mother of his children. She went on to tell me that the grandmother is in poor health, and that Sandy has a handicapped brother, so she helps them after school, but stays with Clara and Leo on the weekends so that she can go to church and have a chance to be a kid. Knowing Clara the way I do, she probably also gives the grandmother money to help buy groceries and pay the bills.

But I wasn’t prepared for what came next. Clara told me that she worries about Sandy’s dad returning to take her and sell her into prostitution because she’s tall and pretty like her mother was. Sandy is twelve years old.

Again my face betrayed me. Clara shrugged and said, “This is a common story in Romania.” She said that some of the older girls from church send her notes, asking her and Leo to pray for them. They respond to advertisements for well-paying summer jobs in Budapest, and go with their parents’ blessing. Then when they arrive they learn that the work is prostitution. Too ashamed to tell their parents, they work as prostitutes for the summer, then come back home with much-needed money for the family, and resume normal life as a student. The notes always end the same way: begging Clara and Leo not to tell their parents.

Last year I had asked Clara about the issue of human trafficking. I had heard that Romania is one of the places where the women enslaved into prostitution come from. She told me about a little girl from their little city, Biberon: Christina was a pretty little blonde with blue eyes who her daughter, Elizabeth, knew from school. One day Christina was walking home from school with a friend. Just two blocks from home a man in a car pulled up to the curb and with urgency in his voice said to Christina, “Hurry! Get in the car! Your mother sent me to get you!” She got into the car and has never been seen or heard from again. Christina’s friend hadn’t thought to notice anything about the man or his car because she had also believed his story. This happened two years ago, when Christina was only ten years old. Most likely Christina has been raped, beaten, and trafficked to a country in Western Europe because she doesn’t need a passport to move about within the European Union.

Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, and slavery is illegal in virtually every country in the world. There are estimated to be more slaves today than in all the years of human history added together. And if you think it’s not happening where you live, think again. Check out your hometown on the slavery map: http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/. To read more about human trafficking, see: http://humantrafficking.org/.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke

Walking By Faith in Europe

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