“Here you work in the hot sun making barely enough money to feed your family, but if you come with me to Hyderabad you could be a babysitter in a big fancy house and make lots of money. You could buy nice new clothes and enjoy a good life in the city.”

It was an alluring proposition for Chinni*, an 18-year-old girl in southeast India who worked in dusty fields from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. for less than a dollar a day. The friendly lady making her the offer had visited the village numerous times over the years and taken many girls to the city, promising them good jobs and a chance to earn a decent wage. None of them ever returned, so the villagers simply presumed they had all found great jobs in the city and turned their backs on their poverty-stricken lives.

Chinni was the latest victim, coaxed into leaving the village and heading to Hyderabad in search of a dream.
Once Chinni was in the big city, the woman left her in a house where girls were traded and sold. There, a kind-sounding man approached her. “Young sister, why did you come to this bad place? Don’t worry, I’m going to take you away from this horrible mess. You deserve much better than this.”

Prajwala, a CRS partner that fights human trafficking, trains women in bookbinding, carpentry, and other job skills such as making artificial flowers. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

Confused and scared, Chinni decided to place her trust in the man who offered to help her get out of the house where she had just been dumped. Unbeknown to her, she was jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. The man befriending her and winning her confidence was, in fact, a con man and human broker. He took her to the Indian state of Maharashtra, where she was sold to a brothel owner for 50,000 rupees ($1,100).

“It was a terrifying experience to arrive in that place. When I saw all these young girls in short skirts surrounded by rowdies (brothel customers) and goons (brothel guards), I thought, ‘I am never going to see my parents again.’”

Although Chinni had no money, she desperately wanted to escape. The first time she tried to run away, she saw some police nearby and ran to them for help, but they turned out to be pimps in disguise. She was taken back to the brothel and punished.

“I was tortured for trying to flee. The pimps beat me, cut me with knives and extinguished their cigarettes on my skin. There was this one girl who kept trying to break out; she had acid poured on her genitals as a warning to the rest of us.”
Chinni remained resolute and determined to get out. She bided her time waiting for the opportune moment.

Early one morning after a party, she snuck out and ran all the way to the train station where she boarded the first train back to Hyderabad in her home state. She had no money and no ticket, but when the conductor heard her desperate story, he took pity on her and allowed her to continue her journey. Upon arrival at Hyderabad station, she was approached by people who were conducting a rescue of human trafficking victims. They took her to their counseling center at the local police station.

The people were from Prajwala, an anti-trafficking organization that helps prevent the sale of women into forced prostitution, and rescue them if they are caught in it. With support from Catholic Relief Services, Prajwala teaches trafficking victims job skills like bookbinding, carpentry, and printing.

“These people were friendly and honest,” says Chinni. “I realized that I was in good hands and safe at last. I thank God every day that they found me.

“Prajwala has completely changed my life: I never knew such a peaceful world existed and I certainly never dreamed I might get the chance to learn so many useful trades like embroidery, screen-printing and carpentry.”

Prajwala empowered Chinni by providing her with vocational training. With her newly-acquired skills, she has become an independent, self-supporting woman.

Recovered and reintegrated after her trafficking ordeal, she was married in 2009 and now has a beautiful six-month-old daughter, Pooja. With the assistance of CRS and Prajwala, she has finally achieved her original dream: a happy life.

* Names changed to protect identities.

Steve Cunliffe is a freelance writer working in India.

Padmavathi, a woman in her twenties, stood in a huge, noisy railway station feeling overwhelmed and lost. With her baby son, she had left her village to come to one of India’s biggest cities, Hyderabad. As she wandered around, she was approached by a man who offered her dinner and a place to stay.

“He seemed nice and I was beyond desperate, so I accepted.”

Padmavathi had left her husband because of dowry harassment. “My family could not afford to pay my bridal price.” That meant her husband’s family could make her life a torment. After six years of this, “I sold my only possessions of value – anklets and a necklace – for money to travel to Hyderabad in search of work.” With two sons to consider, this was not an easy decision to make. But, finally, she left the elder son with her family and absconded with the baby.

Now in the city, she was an easy target for con artists and traffickers. For the first three days, the man who had approached her was kind and generous, but on the fourth day everything changed. The man said he had found her a job cooking at a big function, but it turned out to be a hoax. “Two men were waiting for me when I arrived at the place and they set about trying to rape me. I fought and kicked and screamed. When I broke down in tears, the one fellow left, but the other man said he had paid for me and refused to leave unsatisfied. He beat and raped me. That was how my nightmare began.”

A Prajwala poster points to a way to end trafficking. Prajwala, a CRS partner, fights human trafficking and trains women in bookbinding, carpentry, and other job skills, and employs them. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

From that day forth, the pimp used Padmavathi’s baby son as leverage, forcing her to go out every night as a prositute. If she refused to go with a man, he would hurt her. She had a tiny room and some food, but he kept all the money. Padmavathi found herself a victim of human trafficking, bonded into sexual slavery with seemingly no hope of escape. This became her wretched existence for the next two and ahalf years.

Returning exhausted from work one morning, she was met by her pimp with the news that her son was dead. During a drunken binge the previous night, the man and his friends had plied the child with so much liquor that they had killed him: the body was buried in a shallow unmarked grave across the road.

After one night off, he told her to get back to work. She refused saying, “No. All these times I went with many men, I did it out of love for my son. Now he is gone and I have no reason to go anymore. I am done.” But while Padmavathi plotted her escape, the pimp took her, along with another girl, to Goa where they were sold to a brothel keeper for 20,000 rupees ($440) each. Further from home than ever before, Padmavathi continued to plan her getaway. When Padmavathi shared her escape ideas with the second girl, the terrified young woman told the brothel keeper and Padmavathi was mercilessly beaten.

Undeterred, she scrounged a little money together, found some inconspicuous clothes and bought a bus ticket to Hubli. “Without enough money to get all the way back to Hyderabad, I begged an auto-rickshaw driver to give me a lift to the local train station, but instead of taking me to the station the fellow picked up a friend and took me into the jungle. For two days they used me in the forest, but when they were done, they bought me a ticket back to Hyderabad.”

After suffering innumerable trials along the way, Padmavathi eventually found herself back at her village. After three long years away, she was reunited with her oldest boy.

Because of the stigma attached to sex trafficking, she was unable to tell her family the truth about her ordeal and pretended everything was all right and that she had a good job to go back to in Hyderabad.

In order to provide for her son and his future, Padmavathi decided they would return to Hyderabad where she would continue to work as a prostitute but without a pimp, saving all the money she earned for her child’s education. “I enrolled my son in a good school, rented us a new room and decided to go myself for this work to help my son.

“But, one day, on my way home after working at the bus stop, I was stopped by the Prajwala people. They took me to the police station and counseled me that I could quit this horrible work; I had another option.”

Prajwala, an anti-trafficking organization supported by Catholic Relief Services, reaches out to women who have been exploited and sold. They offered Padmavathi a chance to work in their print and bookbinding shop.

At first, the large printing presses and other complex machinery terrified her, but “I was so desperate for a real job that I forced myself to overcome my fear,” she says. “There and then I made a decision that I wanted to learn all the trades on offer and how to work the technical things.”

With a trainee’s salary of 1,500 rupees ($33) a month, she wasn’t earning much money, but it was honest work that taught her valuable vocational skills. She was on the road to recovery and a normal life.

Padmavathi has now been at Prajwala for more than five years. She has mastered every trade on offer and gained valuable vocational training in a variety of fields. Planning for the future, Padmavathi has saved and bought some land back in her village, where she is constructing a modest house as a legacy for her son.

Padmavathi has successfully turned her life around and built a bright future for herself and her son. “After two years at Prajwala, my fear receded and my confidence returned,” she says, with a twinkle of optimism in her eye. “I invited my parents to come and visit me in the city, to see that I was living a dignified life.”

Steve Cunliffe is a freelance writer working in India.