Saving Girls from Sexual Slavery

You may have read my post about a trip to Nepal this summer when, along with six child care professionals in business suits, I travelled eight hours by bus and spent the night in a church, in order to attend an important graduation. (I might mention that on the way we saw a lorry tip off the road and get pulled up again by just five men with a rope and pulley – the power of working together!) Celebrating this graduation wasn’t the only thing I did in Nepal though. I also checked up on what’s happening with the Daughter programme, which is now being run by 145 churches around Nepal. 

Girls reading the Daughter leaflet

Many people think of Nepal as a ‘shangri-la’ of mountains, centring around Kathmandu – a hippie haven filled with bright flags and colourfully dressed locals. Less popular with tourists and foreign imaginations are the southern plains that produce most of Nepal’s agriculture and border with India. It’s here that Daughter is having the biggest impact, because it’s here that children are taken from (or sometimes sold by) their families into bonded labour, circuses, and sexual slavery in India’s cities and Nepal’s brothels. What I have for you now are some stories about how Christians working together are saving real children from a life of slavery and abuse.

Pastor Surya, encouraged by the Viva Equip People course to start a church outreach to children at risk, organised a Daughter community meeting where 13-year-old Niru presented her story. Niru’s alcoholic father used to beat her mother so severely that her mother left and married another man – something that’s socially unacceptable in Nepalese culture. Niru was left to live at her grandmother’s house, where an uncle started molesting her last year. She fled the situation and returned to live with her mother, but her step-father refused to have her in the house. That was her situation when Pastor Surya heard her speak this spring… the whole audience was moved by her story. With the help of CarNet Nepal, our partner network of Christian organisations caring for children at risk in Nepal, Pastor Surya was able to take Niru right away to the appropriate transit shelter (a network member), where she’s been going through rehabilitation therapy and now wants to attend school! Thanks to Viva Equip People, the Daughter programme and the power of a network of Christian organisations, Niru doesn’t have to suffer anymore.

Many times, churches will hold Daughter meetings in their neighbourhoods. Children and mothers feel so safe at these meetings that they often come forward to admit abuses that have gone on in their homes. Often, though, the church isn’t ready to deal with the pressure of supporting these mothers and children emotionally and financially. They have the desire to care for them, but little expertise. That’s where Viva Equip People comes in, hand-in-hand with a broad network of well-trained organisations to share responsibility for the child’s wellbeing. Viva Equip People complements the desire to help with the knowledge of what to do.

This is just what happened in a church in south eastern Nepal. The church, a member of the Nepal network, held a Daughter forum for locals and found out about a girl being sexually abused by her father. When the church told the girl’s mother, she left the father immediately – a bold step, since single mothers have a heavy social stigma in Nepalese society. But where was she to go next? Working together as a network has enabled the church and other organisations to save the lives of this mother and daughter. They’re able to live in one of the member churches’ spare rooms, and earn money by catering for events held by the other churches and organisations in the network! One church alone couldn’t have provided a home and livelihood for this woman and her daughter; it took the combined efforts of several churches, compelled by the Daughter project to help women and girls at risk.

Daughter has been so successful in the city of Biratnagar that 25 churches have come together to form a child rescue group. Members of these churches go out into the city streets looking for children at risk of being trafficked. Many children in Nepal are separated from their families because of domestic abuse, alcoholism or poverty. When the church group finds them they are placed in a local Christian transit shelter, where they can stay until a family situation is arranged for them. Sometimes this means finding and contacting the natural family members and reconciling them with their children. Sometimes it means finding them a new family or a permanent care home. But it always means keeping them out of the hands of traffickers!

A group of pastors in one border district was able to intervene and prevent Asha, a girl who was in danger of being returned to her ‘husband’ in India. Asha’s parents divorced when she was seven, leaving her to live with her aunt. An uncle from India lured Asha south of the border with the promise of an education, and then sold her to be the wife of a man who sexually assaulted and tortured her. In February of this year she managed to escape and flee to her aunt in Nepal, but her ‘husband’ and uncle came to take her back. A pastor who was involved with Daughter heard of the case and intervened, bringing other pastors from the area to provide support. In the face of such opposition, the uncle and husband haven’t harassed Asha since.

Before the Daughter project came on the scene to unify churches to protect children from trafficking, churches were largely unaware of their responsibility – and opportunity – to reach out to vulnerable children in their communities. Now they’re taking huge steps to protect their local children from the dangers of trafficking, and are excited about how Viva Equip People training is helping meet the need they’re finding. We at Viva are so excited to be part of this revolution in child protection in Nepal, and can’t wait to bring Viva Equip People courses to Christians all over the country.

~ Ian, Viva Asia Co-ordinator

Learn more about the Daughter project at www.viva.org/Daughter/