Saturday 14 March , by Wendy Champagne. So why is an attractive, independent 22 year-old reluctant to commit to marriage? For three years she had lived in a series of windowless single bedrooms. A prisoner condemned to sex-work, when she was fi nally pulled out from that hell all she could think about was revenge. Social reintegration often feels like the forgotten end of the antitraffi cking spectrum.
To hunt down and charge traffi ckers and brothel owners takes enormous time and resources, so when it comes to preparing former victims for life after the streets many organizations seem to run out of steam. To confuse matters further, there is not a clearly defi ned model for successful reintegrationβ or even a consensus on what success might mean. Exacerbating the issue is the fact that traffi cked girls are at a great risk of re-traffi cking and further exploitation. Most young victims have little or no education and invariably come from broken or very poor households.
The natural response of organizations in India, where girls are provided for and protected by their families until marriage, is to offer safety, shelter, and basic needs to rescued girls: the welfare model. She returned to Mumbai, the scene of her worst nightmares, to work at the Rescue Foundation and conduct brothel raids in the hope that she would encounter her former brothel owners in the process. She was unsuccessful, yet her desire to live in the wide world and seek personal justice has brought her face-to-face with another major life issue: to marry or not to marry.
In India, marriage is viewed as an essential part of the culture. Despite years of westernized global economy and culture swapping, 80 percent of all marriages are still arranged. For most young female trafficking victims there is little hope of ever returning home as that means going back to the place where the exploitation started.
This puts the responsibility on organizations such as the Rescue Foundations to choose a future path for their wards. I want to make sure they are well provided for and secure.
