Low estimates of sex trafficking in children in India are half a million a year, according to the United Nations. The kids don't live long. Children's bodies wear out from damage and sexually transmitted diseases.
Satif (not his real name) is a personable Indian Christian pastor who is thought by Indian sex traffickers to be a purchaser of children for sex with foreigners. American Christians see him as a modern day Saint Paul.
Our church has donated to Satif's mission by donating money to buy 100 children out of slavery. About $120 of that money went toward medical expenses of a young teenage girl dying of AIDS. Satif's mission is about half adoption agency and half medical and hospice. The orphanage staff give the children who aren't going to make it loving support until death. The more hopeful, joyful part of the work is seeing children adopted by childless Christian couples who will cherish them.
Most of the children involved in sex slavery are between three and twelve years of age. The younger they are removed from the sex trade, the more easily they can be rehabilitated and "restored to innocence." The youngest child Satif bought was two years old, and she required extensive reconstructive surgery. Over 400 Indian couples have applied to adopt children, but Satif's staff cannot work more quickly. The rehabilitation program lasts about eight months, barely long enough for the children to receive medical attention and to quit fearing all adults.
Many children are sold by their parents or kidnapped.
Hindu villages are assigned a yearly quota of children to be given to the temple priests, who believe that sex with virgins speeds them on their path of reincarnations. After the children are no longer virgins, being of no further use in the temples they are sold to sex traffickers. The children cannot be returned to their parents, because the parents would be condemned by the village priest, cut off from the community and the entire family starve. Satif said that temple prostitution has the effect of legitimizing the sexual use of children.
One Hindu couple dropped off a baby at the orphanage because the village priest read the child's horoscope and declared the infant was an "unlucky child" and banished it lest the village be contaminated. That child was placed unharmed with grateful new parents.
Criminal rings profit from "sexual tourism," especially Japanese tourists looking for a week of sex with children, who they can drop off at the airport when they leave. Other racketeers force the children into highly profitable domestic prostitution.
Local authorities have threatened Christian-sponsored orphanages with closure on the grounds of spreading Christianity and other anti-social behaviors. Satif has been imprisoned twice on those grounds. Our group leader Eve, who met him many years ago, said Satif could hardly walk after his last imprisonment. (Christian churches in India are subject to continuous petty harassment, such as noise ordinances.)
New governmental restrictions are requiring the mission to segregate girls and boys into separate orphanages. Orphanages are being remodeled to provide on-site living quarters for staff. When the government threatened to close the orphanzages, adoptive parents of the rescued children responded with lobbying and letter writing campaigns. They testify that the adopted children have removed their shame of being childless.
Satif mentioned feeling called to start a branch orphanage in Burma, which he describes as "100 times worse" than India. In communist Burma (Myanmar if you keep up with the news), gang rape by soldiers is an instrument of state policy in controlling villages. No religious gloss there.
This dangerous work of buying children from the slave markets, rehabilitating them and finding parents has resulted in 2,000 children having been rescued. Two thousand out of 500,000 a year in India alone.
A candle in the dark.
Satif (not his real name) is a personable Indian Christian pastor who is thought by Indian sex traffickers to be a purchaser of children for sex with foreigners. American Christians see him as a modern day Saint Paul.
Our church has donated to Satif's mission by donating money to buy 100 children out of slavery. About $120 of that money went toward medical expenses of a young teenage girl dying of AIDS. Satif's mission is about half adoption agency and half medical and hospice. The orphanage staff give the children who aren't going to make it loving support until death. The more hopeful, joyful part of the work is seeing children adopted by childless Christian couples who will cherish them.
Most of the children involved in sex slavery are between three and twelve years of age. The younger they are removed from the sex trade, the more easily they can be rehabilitated and "restored to innocence." The youngest child Satif bought was two years old, and she required extensive reconstructive surgery. Over 400 Indian couples have applied to adopt children, but Satif's staff cannot work more quickly. The rehabilitation program lasts about eight months, barely long enough for the children to receive medical attention and to quit fearing all adults.
Many children are sold by their parents or kidnapped.
Hindu villages are assigned a yearly quota of children to be given to the temple priests, who believe that sex with virgins speeds them on their path of reincarnations. After the children are no longer virgins, being of no further use in the temples they are sold to sex traffickers. The children cannot be returned to their parents, because the parents would be condemned by the village priest, cut off from the community and the entire family starve. Satif said that temple prostitution has the effect of legitimizing the sexual use of children.
One Hindu couple dropped off a baby at the orphanage because the village priest read the child's horoscope and declared the infant was an "unlucky child" and banished it lest the village be contaminated. That child was placed unharmed with grateful new parents.
Criminal rings profit from "sexual tourism," especially Japanese tourists looking for a week of sex with children, who they can drop off at the airport when they leave. Other racketeers force the children into highly profitable domestic prostitution.
Local authorities have threatened Christian-sponsored orphanages with closure on the grounds of spreading Christianity and other anti-social behaviors. Satif has been imprisoned twice on those grounds. Our group leader Eve, who met him many years ago, said Satif could hardly walk after his last imprisonment. (Christian churches in India are subject to continuous petty harassment, such as noise ordinances.)
New governmental restrictions are requiring the mission to segregate girls and boys into separate orphanages. Orphanages are being remodeled to provide on-site living quarters for staff. When the government threatened to close the orphanzages, adoptive parents of the rescued children responded with lobbying and letter writing campaigns. They testify that the adopted children have removed their shame of being childless.
Satif mentioned feeling called to start a branch orphanage in Burma, which he describes as "100 times worse" than India. In communist Burma (Myanmar if you keep up with the news), gang rape by soldiers is an instrument of state policy in controlling villages. No religious gloss there.
This dangerous work of buying children from the slave markets, rehabilitating them and finding parents has resulted in 2,000 children having been rescued. Two thousand out of 500,000 a year in India alone.
A candle in the dark.