Sabita* (18) only received a basic education. When she was a child, her parents were both injured during the political conflicts, leaving her family in an extremely vulnerable situation. We always speak of the risks that girls and young women encounter when they lack a good education, and Sabita’s story is a testament to that.
Girls her age should stay in school, but because her family struggled, Sabita traveled to India to search for work. While she was there, she thought she was having all the luck in the world when she met an Indian man. Social media is widely used in these cultures, and due to a lack of media literacy, she was deceived by a man who pretended to be in love with her and promised her marriage. When they met, all her illusions shattered. He repeatedly subjected her to sexual exploitation and tried to sell her to a trafficker. She was held captive in a room, stripped of her mobile devices to prevent her from contacting her family, and was repeatedly abused.
Every day, the abuses got worse than the previous one. One day, the man went away, and she managed to escape. She asked for help from a passerby, asking them to use their phone, and she immediately contacted a relative for help.
What sounded like a relieving ending to a story turned out to be a lot more complicated than that. In a highly gender-discriminatory community like Sabita’s, the abuse does not end with the trafficker. When she returned home, she faced verbal and mental abuse from her mother and stepfather, and stigma from her village. To them, her character has been tarnished, and they told her it was all her fault that it even happened to her. Culture is the family of our families. So when one’s culture is unkind to women, it is very likely that her own family is unkind to her too.
Since her home is not a safe place, she was again vulnerable to human trafficking. When we learned about Sabita’s situation, we immediately offered her shelter at our Women’s Safe Haven. There, she received counseling sessions and was informed of the dangers of human trafficking. We hope that when she understands this common systemic issue, she will make sense of what happened to her and stop blaming herself.
She expresses that she wants to learn some vocational skills, so she can be self-reliant and still help her family, even though they were unkind to her. After her counseling sessions, we will be providing her with some skill-based training as she asked. Looking at her, we see a young woman who is brave and determined. Despite everything that happened to her, she remained thoughtful and kind towards her family. Now, we hope she imparts the same care towards herself.
Hopefully, our efforts will help her get back on her feet.
*Name is changed for privacy.
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