How long does this take? As a caregiver, it is hard to not want to rush the healing process for the children in our care. They often enter aftercare an absolute wreck. Some are angry and rebellious having run away from home and want to return to their lives on the street every day. Others are deeply fearful and distrustful having never experienced a single loving relationship with anyone. Very nearly all of them come to us with STDs and significant health issues like eating disorders, reproductive damage, and malnutrition. How does a caregiver even begin to help them pick up the pieces?

The thing about childhood trauma is that it has a deep and lasting impact. What caregivers have noted for years is now being proven by science. It is not just the mind and spirit that is affected; the body is literally changed as well. Recent research is showing unquestionable links between childhood trauma and things like asthma and lung cancer. Just in terms of brain development, we know that ongoing trauma actually changes the way a child develops, often leaving them with inhibited ability to think and speak clearly and a decreased ability to understand cause and effect. This alone makes recovery a hard process. How do you help a child learn to make autonomous choices when she can’t articulate her own thoughts and she struggles to understand the implications of her own decisions?

To care for a child leaving the commercial sex industry, a caregiver absolutely must think in terms of holistic care. We have to realize that brain development has been compromised and slowed. We have to realize that basic things like autonomy, self-awareness, and personal boundaries have sometimes never been learned. We have to realize that in addition to the literal and figurative demons that child survivors face, they are fighting with their own bodies for basic health. So with these realizations, we are back to our first question: how long does it take to see a child survivor heal?

The answer is… a really, really, really long time. The unfortunate reality is that trauma has changed them forever. They will never be who they would have been without their experiences. The hopeful thing is that most of them CAN overcome developmental delays, bad habits, and fear. They can learn to care for themselves and to affirm their own value. They can begin forming healthy relationships and learn to cope with the health costs of their trauma. But it’s a long road.

What good aftercare does is not heal a child. That simply isn’t possible in a year or two recovery program. A good recovery program equips a child to find healing. It lays a foundation of worthiness, teaches them how to develop safe boundaries and good relationships, and how to navigate real life safely. Good aftercare gives a child the tools that she needs to continue walking toward healing long after she has left the program. What this means is that aftercare center staff have an enormous responsibility, but in many ways even more responsibility rests on the shoulders of the community that receives a recovering survivor. Recovery comes from the combined efforts of professionals, loving neighbors, friends, safe families, and guardians as well as the child herself. As a community, we must be committed to seeing our children restored even if it takes a long time.

(As an organization primarily focused on equipping those on the frontlines, Dark Bali honors caregivers who experience these kinds of stories over and over and yet continue to love and serve victims and survivors with their whole hearts. While they care for survivors, we care for them by providing training on important topics like trauma, therapeutic techniques, and secondary trauma. To partner with Dark Bali in order to serve all of our coalition partners, contact us or become a financial partner.)

The post The Truth About Recovering From Child Sexual Exploitation appeared first on Dark Bali.

Last year, the world’s attention has turned toward human trafficking in new numbers. Particularly in the United States, #savethechildren made headlines as supporters took to the streets seemingly in support of victims of child trafficking. On social media, story after story was shared about people who believed they or their children had narrowly escaped being trafficked in a grocery store parking lot. While I am grateful for the attention that these stories have brought to the human trafficking movement, I want to be honest about the impact because intentions and impact are two different things. The truth is that these stories cause damage to the anti-trafficking movement and silence the voices of real survivors.

If you wade through the fake human trafficking stories, what you find is that there is a common thread of identification. The “victims” of the stories are relatable to the average person. This draws the reader into the story because they can imagine themselves or a child in their lives as the victim. That is why nearly all movies involving human trafficking show middle class girls from loving families getting snatched off the streets. It is a compelling image to most people, but it is rarely reality.

Traffickers are smart. They do not tend to go after children who have parents who will look for them. They go after the runaways and homeless, the kids who have aged out of foster care and are on their own, and the ones in the middle of migration whose parents don’t even know where they are. Real human trafficking stories are always complicated, but they aren’t as approachable for the average person because we are fortunate to have little or no experiences with the typical traumas that often eventually lead to trafficking.

The middle class girl snatched from her neighborhood sidewalk is a much easier sell than the story of the teenage girl who was moved around to different foster homes until she ran off with her boyfriend who pimped her out so they could both get their next opiate fix. The first is a Hollywood movie; the second is reality. In Indonesia, the stories of survivors begin with poverty and/or child marriage, and they end with migration and the complicated choices that a teenage girl should never have to make in order to stay alive.

The truth is that we like the dramatic stories of the children from homes like ours because those problems are easy to solve. If human trafficking looked like Hollywood movies, all we really need is good prevention education, strong law enforcement, and a Liam Neeson in a pinch. In contrast, the stories of actual human trafficking survivors demand that we acknowledge and address issues like poverty, immigration, addiction, and broken systems. This requires more from us than a share on social media, a street sign, or a conversation about stranger danger with our children.

Luckily, the average person can become an ally to survivors and an asset in the anti-trafficking movement. It takes a commitment to listen to survivors to hear the real stories even when they are complicated and have no easy solutions and make us uncomfortable. It takes doing some homework to ensure that the organizations you support are legitimate and the stories that you share are true. These are the kind of allies that anti-trafficking organizations need – ones who can live in the tension of the complexities and honor the reality of the lived experiences of survivors without judgement. We need people who are in it for the long haul, tackling the problems that lead to trafficking in the first place, rather than those who are in it for a few likes.

(For more information about how you can support legitimate anti-trafficking organizations, see our post on 10 Ways You Can Support Anti-Trafficking Without Spending a Dime. You can also check out our ACT page for more ideas.)

The post The Harm of Fake Trafficking Stories appeared first on Dark Bali.

There were two of them. One was probably around 7 and the other younger… maybe 4. They could have been sisters. They were both small and skinny, with tattered clothing and hungry eyes. I saw them as I was walking across the parking lot to the convenience store where I stopped to get a bottle of water on my way home. It was dark, but I could see both of the girls clearly because they were standing next to the door of the store in the light coming from the windows. They both had open palms and watched me intently as I walked toward them. I smiled at both of them, said hello, and went on inside.

The smile on my face didn’t match what I was feeling. I didn’t know these particular kids, but I was familiar with the stories of other street kids around Indonesia. Many of them had no real families or were sent by their families in village far away to beg on the streets in the tourist areas for money. They were not enrolled in school and many of them were physically ill and malnourished. Worst of all, I knew that most of the children involved in begging, selling, and street performing were being exploited by adults.

In line with best practices, I bought the girls milk along with my water and pushed straws into the containers ensuring that they could not be resold. I hoped that they would get something nutritious to fill their bellies for the evening. When I went back outside, I put a milk in each girl’s hand and told her that I hoped she would have a good night. It was not enough, but it there was nothing left to do. In Indonesia, there is no child protective services department to call to scoop these kids off the street and place them in a safe residential care.

Curious what the girls would do with their milk, I sat in my car and watched. Without taking a single sip, both girls walked to an expensive white SUV parked in a dark corner of the parking lot. I saw the driver’s window roll down, and a hand adorned with a fancy watch and jeweled rings took each milk and then point back to the convenience store. Dutifully, the girls went back to their spot by the door, palms up waiting for the next passerby. I sighed. It was as I had suspected.

This is only one small story of a couple of children, but they represent a larger group of children that remain virtually invisible to both tourists and Indonesian citizens on my island. They are runaways or children of exploited parents who are used as commodities. I knew it was very likely that their bodies were for sale as well if an interested buyer could be found.

Usually, street kids experience multiple forms of exploitation. Some children are given the task to sell trinkets or fruit and others perform dances on the streets for tourists for tips, but all of them have a handler controlling them and keeping the money that they’ve earned. Within these little gangs of children there is violence and psychological abuse, and in many cases, there is sexual exploitation. Some children sell themselves in exchange for food or housing (a form of child sex trafficking known as “survival sex”), and others are pimped out by others to pedophiles, both local and foreign, who realize that no one really cares what happens to a street child. These kids are the most powerless and vulnerable in society, and their lives are often snuffed out early through disease and violence. Those who do manage to make it to adulthood are generally trapped in the same exploitative cycles of poverty and violence, and their own children are a significant risk of the same.

I am thankful that there is a growing awareness of these children in Indonesia and that there are organizations opening up that are offering drop-in care, medical assistance, and education for kids like these girls. I am thankful that more and more people are recognizing how much more complex their abuse is than simple poverty that leads to begging. There is more to do so that eventually when we come across kids like this, we will be able to immediately respond and keep them away from that jeweled hand that was controlling them to the point that they were too scared to even drink a sip of milk.

(As an organization primarily focused on equipping those on the frontlines, we honor those who are committed to the groundbreaking work of victim identification. They are in the thick of some of the ugliest ways humans hurt one another. While these work to create new paths to retrieve victims from trafficking situations, we support them by providing training on important topics like trauma, victim identification, victim-centered interviewing, and secondary trauma. To partner with Dark Bali in order to serve all of our coalition partners, contact us or become a financial partner.)

The post Exploited for Profit: A Story of Two Street Kids appeared first on Dark Bali.

The stories published about sex trafficking survivors are mostly about the successes. They are about the ones that manage to leave the sex industry. The ones that find healing. The ones who become heroes themselves. 

These stories certainly exist. They are what abolitionists long for and what keep us trying through all the failures along the way. The reality is, however, that failures dominate our landscape. The damage that slavery does to the soul and body does not always have neat resolution. In fact, sometimes there is no resolution at all. HIV kills, and a mind broken by years of unending trauma might never recover. There is a reason that suicide, drug abuse, and re-entry into the sex industry are so common for survivors.

One of the most precious people that I ever encountered in my work was a young girl, Kitty.* Rather than sending her to school, Kitty’s mother sent her to grown men who would rape her for cash. For years, her mother pimped her, ruining her tiny body and breaking her mind, until finally she sold her one last time to a trafficking ring and walked away forever. Mercifully, Kitty was found by the police and taken to a shelter where people who cared deeply about her worked to restore her mind, physical health, and spirit.

This is where the real work begins for a survivor. When they realize that they are physically safe, every dormant demon begins to surface. When there is no longer a need to find food and shelter and physical safety, they have to wrestle with questions of their own value and the implications of what has been done to them. I cannot begin to describe how difficult this process is for a survivor. It’s daily and it’s deep and it’s characterized by starts and stops, progress and regression. Being totally rewritten does not feel good, and for some survivors it becomes too painful to go any further.

That happened to Kitty. She couldn’t do it anymore. Changes in the shelter’s programs, including the loss of her mentor, were overwhelming. So she ran. Like so many others, she left the uncertainty of the healing process back to the life she had before on the streets. It’s a horrible, degrading, and violent life. But it IS predictable, and for some, that predictability becomes the priority.

We still don’t know where Kitty is. It’s been a long time, and even still, when I am out in the city I find myself scanning the crowds hoping that somehow we will encounter each other and she might be persuaded to return to the difficult journey into her own mind and heart. I realize that the likelihood of this encounter is nearly zero, and the chances of her surviving on the streets decreases statistically every day.

This is the agony of anti-trafficking work that is rarely presented to the public. Kitty’s story is not a success story, but it is not atypical. For every story about a survivor who is restored and goes on to live full joy-filled lives, there is a story about a precious life lost forever. However, the bulk land somewhere in the middle. They are the ones who will always suffer the enormous emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual consequences of their trauma, and every single day will require of them a deep courageous choice to keep pushing forward toward hope.

(As an organization primarily focused on equipping those on the frontlines, Dark Bali honors caregivers who experience these kinds of stories over and over and yet continue to love and serve victims and survivors with their whole hearts. While they care for people like Kitty, we care for them by providing training on important topics like trauma, therapeutic techniques, and caregiver burnout. To partner with Dark Bali in order to serve all of our coalition partners, contact us or join our Impact Team.)

*Not her real name.

The post The Truth About Survivor Success Stories appeared first on Dark Bali.

Caring for child survivors of sexual trafficking is multi-faceted. In the initial days, we deal with things like acute medical needs, family services, and legal procedures. But slowly life takes on a rhythm, trust is built, and the deeper wounds are cared for. Trauma for sexually exploited children runs deep, and it is not something that any aftercare program can ever fully and perfectly address. Aside from the necessary mental, emotional, and spiritual healing, a good aftercare program has to think about a child’s future.

For the lucky children in quality aftercare programs, loving parents walk alongside them to help them rebuild their lives and make plans for their futures. For many though, there are no families to go home to, and “after-aftercare” is a life in which they are going to be responsible for themselves. Finishing high school and going to college are sadly not always options either because some are so far behind that they cannot catch up (many teens in aftercare have never attended school at all), or because the years of drug abuse and trauma have decreased their mental capacity so much that they cannot possibly be successful academically. For these girls in particular, helping them come up with a long term plan is critical. Job training and resume building has to start before the girls leave an aftercare program, or they are vulnerable to falling right back into the life they were taken out of.

I am so thankful that in many cities around Indonesia, there is a tribe of people dedicated to caring for child survivors of sexual exploitation. There are multiple organizations supporting important programs, donors giving money so that they can continue running, professionals offering their services, and concerned citizens and tourists praying and advocating for a better chance. My hope for the survivors coming through our regional Task Forces is that they live lives full of authentic loving relationships and that after-aftercare looks like hopes and dreams fulfilled.

The post After Aftercare appeared first on Dark Bali.

Do you like your job?”

The random question was directed at me. There was a lightheartedness in the tone that fit the playful mood that we were in, but there was also a depth to the question that needed a real answer. The question came from a young woman I supervised in our Freedom Business. She and her co-workers were all recent survivors of human trafficking and were getting back on their feet through employment in our company. All of the women turned to me, waiting to hear what I had to say. Luckily, this was not a difficult question to answer.

Meeting the asker’s eyes, I replied, “I do like my job. Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes you all drive me a little crazy, but it’s pretty cool to get a front row seat around people in the process of transformation. I’ve watched all of you taking these amazing steps forward in your lives. It’s special to get to see that and to get to play a small part in it. Yeah. I like my job.”

The conversation moved on, but I have been thinking about it for days. My answer was honest, but it wasn’t complete. The full truth is that I don’t just like my job; I love it. I positively ache with love for the women whom I employ, and I am incredibly proud of them. Sometimes I cry for them on my way home from work because there is simply nothing else to do but hold the stories they’ve shared and grieve for what they’ve endured and the injustice of it all. They are worth crying for when their own tears have long since given way to the shrug of acceptance. I also cry for how brave they are – how they continue to get back on their feet setback after setback, under the weight of pressures that would incapacitate me. Their resilience takes my breath away, and I admire and respect them in a thousand ways. What is the most spectacular to me is that they have not lost their humanity in a world that tried its best to take it from them. Instead, they move forward with determination, self-compassion, and a heaping dose of humor.

The other day I was listening to a lecture by a trauma researcher, and I went back to read some of her work because I was so struck by one of her statements. In one of her academic papers, she wrote, “Trauma recovery could therefore focus on processes of accepting victimhood and innocence (in response to shame), building community (in response to a loss of a sense of common humanity) and developing a new identity and purpose that incorporates the experiences of slavery (in response to a sense of stunted growth).” Or to put it more clearly, recovery requires the (re)creation of community, control, and meaning in a survivor’s life that doesn’t shy away from their traumas but builds on them.

Freedom Businesses offer employment to survivors of human trafficking, but this is really the means to a more important end. It is not the goal. The workplace is the environment where our employees with trafficking experiences are able to regain a sense of control and self-direction. It is where they have the space and encouragement to make meaning of both their pasts and futures. It is where they hear “me too” maybe for the first time and find their experiences and struggles normalized and honored not as a liability but as evidence of their resilience.

The more I think about it, the less I like my title of “supervisor.” I think “midwife” might be more accurate. Isn’t that really what ALL caregivers in this space do? We stand by while our survivor employees do the hard labor, making sure that the environment is safe and that they have what they need to progress. We give encouragement and make contingencies for emergencies, and we have to determine when to offer a sympathetic hug or a firm word of reality.  Mostly, what we do is remind them: Don’t stop now! You’re so close. This is the hardest part. New life is almost here.

(Freedom Businesses are an integral part of the anti-trafficking community, often standing at the end of a long healing journey with survivors as well as offering prevention-related employment to vulnerable communities. Several Freedom Businesses are a part of the Dark Bali coalition. We are glad to equip them with training in trauma, visibility about their products, and connections with the anti-trafficking community throughout Indonesia (which enable survivors to move from safehouses to employment and reintegration more easily). You can find out more about these partners on our connect page and help us serve them by becoming a monthly donor through our Impact Team.)

The post The Last Step in a Survivor’s Journey appeared first on Dark Bali.

Every month I join a team of women that goes into brothels, nightclubs, and red light districts in a large Indonesian city. Every outreach night is different. Sometimes our conversations seem insignificant – just small talk. Other nights, it seems like we have important conversations and make long-lasting connections with the girls and women we meet. A couple of months ago, I spent a long time chatting with a girl I’ll call Intan who was brand new to the brothel. She is 24 and left behind a 4 year-old on another island to come here for a chance to make enough money to give her daughter and her sick father a better life. Unlike some who are duped into sex work or sold by family members, Intan knew what she was getting herself into.

Last night, as I was finishing a conversation with another girl in the brothel, I spotted Intan. She was crying. I made my way over to her, and she stood and all but collapsed into my arms sobbing her heart out. I asked her what was going on. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to do this anymore. But I have a debt and the brothel has security cameras and guard… They won’t let me leave.”

Through her tears, we talked about her situation, one that had gone from fairly straightforward prostitution to slavery. This is debt bondage, and it’s a common way people are enslaved. Intan’s situation is even trickier because her recruiter knows where her family lives and the threat of violence against them keeps her from running.

Intan cried for another half hour, her head on my shoulder as we sat side-by-side on the brothel bench while I did my best to avoid the eyes of the buyers roving around the front of the room. Finally, her friend joined us and offered to re-do Intan’s makeup. It was time for our team to leave. Before we went, Intan picked up a piece of fruit from the basket in the corner and handed it to me. I thanked her and with a last hug, said goodbye.

I’ve been staring at this snake fruit on my desk all day. It may be one of the most precious things I’ve been given. In Indonesia, friendship is usually recognized in a very tangible way, through the exchange of items. When I gave Intan a slip of paper with contact information, I was offering her my friendship. When she gave me the fruit, she was offering hers. What is probably more significant is that this was not a free gift for her. The inflated price of that fruit went into a ledger as a part of the debt that she must pay off in order to go home.

I have Intan’s information, and I am following it up with some contacts that I have. But to be honest, I have little hope that it will matter. This isn’t the first or fifth time we’ve encountered this exact situation, and unless we can somehow prove that the person is under 18 (difficult considering the minors are given false paperwork and their actual IDs confiscated), the police are unresponsive. They consider the “contract” the girl signs to be binding even though debt bondage is illegal everywhere. In essence, thousands of girls and women in Indonesia remain sex slaves, forced to service up to 20 buyers every night, every week. They have no options and no expectation that there is anyone who can or will help them. We will continue to go to these places and do what we can to advocate for the women and girls inside. We continue telling their stories, believing that at some point there will be change and the Indonesian government will crack down on illegal debt bondage and human trafficking. Until then, we sit with our friends, sharing fruit and making sure that even in their trauma, they are not alone.

(Our partners who are involved in intervention and outreach programs directly in the brothels experience their own trauma. Dark Bali is committed to the care of these caregivers as they do this incredibly difficult job. We provide training on secondary trauma prevention and recovery as well as work to increase the cooperation between law enforcement and victim services through police training and regional Task Forces. You can be a part of caring for caregivers on the frontlines by joining our Monthly Impact Team or by contacting us to donate your own professional skills and services.)

The post Inside an Indonesian Brothel: Intan’s Story appeared first on Dark Bali.

I saw you.

I saw your small form propped on a bar stool, young legs too short to reach the ground.  You were out of place in this loud bar in the middle of the night. Tourists pushed their way through the open restaurants and crowds that spilled into the streets. Good money had been paid to have this holiday, where what happens in Bali stays in Bali. Beer and bad decisions flowed freely. I don’t think a single one of them noticed you there. Far too young to be in that kind of place at that kind of hour.

I saw you.

I saw you with your face turned toward the street as the person in charge of you hungrily scanned the crowd to see who would eventually notice you. Who came all the way here just to feed on your soul and ravage your body. Pretending to study the bar’s menu, I watched you. I was hoping to find a reason to think I was wrong. Maybe a parent with horrible judgment would appear and take you someplace you deserved to be. No parent came.

I saw you.

I saw that your blank stare never changed for the minutes that I studied you. Even when I looked you full in the face and smiled, hoping that at least you would know that somebody saw you, somebody who would ask nothing of you. But you stared right through me. I realized that you were stoned. Not yet out of elementary school and stoned. Oddly, I was thankful because at least you might not remember what must have happened to you last night after I left.

I saw you.

I saw your image even as I closed my eyes to sleep, tears on my pillow. I wanted to tell you to hold on because rescue is coming! But even if I had the opportunity to speak to you and even if you had the ability to hear me, it would have been a lie. I don’t know if rescue is coming. I don’t know if it will come quick enough for you here in Bali. I don’t know if you will be lost like the countless other children to this insidious black market of young bodies. I don’t know if you will ever make it out alive.

I just wish that you knew that last night…

I saw you.

(As an organization primarily focused on equipping those on the frontlines, we honor those on the frontlines: law enforcement, social workers, and caregivers who experience these kinds of stories over and over and yet continue to love and serve victims and survivors with their whole hearts. While they work to identify and rescue girls like this one (a real experience from a coalition member), we support them by providing training on important topics like trauma, victim identification, victim-centered interviewing, and secondary trauma. To partner with Dark Bali in order to serve all of our coalition partners, contact us or become a financial partner.)

The post I Saw You appeared first on Dark Bali.

Secondary Trauma. It is defined by psychologists as “the emotional duress that results when an individual hears about the firsthand trauma experiences of another. Its symptoms mimic those of post-traumatic stress disorder.” Secondary trauma is one more way that human trafficking victimizes. Only these victims are not themselves survivors of human trafficking. They are the caregivers of survivors. They are the police, the case workers, the counselors, and staff of aftercare centers and programs. They are heroes.

Much attention has been given to survivors of trafficking, and rightfully so! Their experiences showcase some of the worst things that human beings do to one another, robbing people of dignity, agency, and hope. For many survivors, the consequences of their experiences are lifelong and can significantly impair their ability to live a normal life. What is less understood is the affects of being a caregiver of traumatized people, especially the kind of caregiver whose role is to listen to the details of horrible abuse from the perspective of the one who experienced it. In fact, what makes a caregiver good at his or her job is compassion, and it is exactly this compassion that can lead to the undoing of that caregiver’s own mental health.

As I interact with people investing their lives in the care of survivors, I am deeply aware of the price that they are paying personally. They do not have to put themselves at risk, yet they do. Every. Single. Day. They show up; they listen; they absorb anger; they pray; and they cry their own tears of powerlessness. And then they wake up the next day to do it again.

Dark Bali is a network of these heroes. We are aware that not everyone is given the privilege or responsibility for carrying the stories of survivors and victims of human trafficking, and we do not regret our place in these stories. What we do ask for is that as we carry the traumas of the ones in our care, you would help carry ours. Will you come alongside us and ensure that we have what we need to do the work that is ours to do?  If we all share the burden of the stories of Indonesia’s trafficking victims and survivors, our movement will grow and our vision to see slavery abolished and the lives of survivors restored will be accomplished.

(As an organization primarily focused on equipping those on the frontlines, Dark Bali honors caregivers who continue to serve, sometimes at great personal cost. While these heroes care for survivors, we care for them by providing training on important topics like trauma, therapeutic techniques, and burnout/secondary trauma. To partner with Dark Bali in order to serve all of our coalition partners, contact us or become a financial partner.)

The post The Cost of Caring appeared first on Dark Bali.

I regularly hang out in a few brothels in my city with a multi-organizational outreach team. I go inside the waiting area of a brothel and spend a couple of hours talking with the 25-50 women and girls inside. On one wall is a pane of glass, and I can see the hungry eyes of the buyers on the other side. One at a time, the women stand up as a laser pointer light lands on their chest. Time to work. 

My first time in the brothel was disconcerting. I was worried about offending the women, and I felt unnerved by the men outside of the room. By my second and third visits, I began noticing the “culture” of the brothel. In this place that seems like it should be devoid of any humanity, Indonesian hospitality is still the rule. I am offered food and water and sympathetic apologies for the heat.

If it wasn’t for that pane of glass, it would be like waiting for a train with a big group of women. Some listen to music or play on their cell phones. Others chat and show off pictures of their kids at home. Their kids… To date, around 90% of the women I have met in the brothels have a small child at home. Most are very young (often teenage), single mothers trying to provide a better life for their children with the only “skill” they think will bring in any significant source of income.*

Vendors come through the brothels. Many of them sell snacks or small cosmetics, but they are not the most popular kind of vendor. The vendors who get the most attention are the ones who bring bags of cute clothing, size infant to 5T. The women pull out outfits, and these young moms playfully argue about who gets to buy what to send back home.

It shreds my heart with grief because luck and privilege are the only differences between their lives and mine. I was born to opportunity and wealth, and that is the only reason that I am allowed to go home to a loving husband at the end of the night rather than to a dingy room around the corner with a man I’ve never met before.

This morning I looked at my little boy, the same age as the child of a new friend I shared a bench with in the brothel last night. I know the power of a mother’s love. That’s love that will go through hell every single night if it is the only way to keep my baby from suffering. That’s love that would never breathe a word of my own suffering to keep his world innocent and perpetuate his belief that I can protect him. That’s love that buys baby clothes from rape money.

*Many of the women in the brothels in Indonesia were tricked into believing that they were coming to work in the hospitality industry. Some of them were not legal adults when they first arrived and were put into the brothels. When they arrive they have a “contract” stating how much money they must pay to the brothel for the freedom to leave. This is modern day slavery or human trafficking. After enduring months or years of being prostituted to fulfill their contracts, the women become “free agents,” able to leave if they choose. However, the years of trauma and exploitation leave many of them thinking they have no real value other than their ability to earn income for their children and families back home, so they remain in prostitution. Some end up exchanging room and board for a new “contract” to continue working at the place that first exploited them.

(As an organization primarily focused on equipping those on the frontlines, we honor caregivers who experience these kinds of stories and the trauma that they hold themselves because of it. While they care for women and girls inside of the sex industry, we care for them by providing training on important topics like trauma, therapeutic techniques, secondary trauma as well as coordinating relationships between local law enforcement and caregivers working inside of the red light districts to help get these women and girls out and prosecute their traffickers. To partner with Dark Bali in order to serve all of our coalition partners, contact us or become a financial partner.)

The post They Buy Baby Clothes appeared first on Dark Bali.