CASERTA, Italy — The Nigerian woman told a familiar tale. Fleeing poverty, with few prospects at home and lured by the promise of legal employment, she became one of the tens of thousands of migrants who have been braving the Mediterranean in crowded boats, bound for Europe.
After she landed, the traffickers who arranged her journey told her she owed them 50,000 euros, about $56,000. Alone, with no money and unable to speak the language, she found herself at their mercy. They took her documents and forced her into prostitution on the streets of Palermo.
As the world’s turmoil and poverty drive a relentless exodus to Europe, stories of disappointment, hardship and even death abound. Most involve the young men of Syria, North Africa and, increasingly, sub-Saharan Africa who have dominated the population shift; of the 170,000 migrants who arrived in Italy by sea in 2014, only about 18,000 were women.
But increasingly more women, some with children, are climbing into boats for the illegal journey, the authorities say. Vulnerable and usually penniless, they come seeking a better life but can instead find themselves caught up in a billion-dollar international market of human exploitation. Of these women, most remain in the shadows, under the control of the traffickers.
But some have found a haven.
After three years, the Nigerian woman summoned the courage to rebel, coaxed by a nun in Palermo who volunteered with a street unit that provides medical and psychological support to prostitutes. The nun passed on the address of a shelter in Caserta, just north of Naples, where the woman was able to hide from her handlers and break from her life on the streets.
Here at the shelter, known as Casa Ruth, the woman — who asked that her name not be used because her family in Nigeria does not know how she was earning her living — shares a tidy apartment in a modern building with a half-dozen other women, some of whom tell similar stories of debasement and imprisonment. They work together in a sewing cooperative run by the shelter called Newhope, whose goal is to equip the women with both confidence and skills.
“The cooperative is important because it shows them that they can produce, that they can make money not with their bodies, but through their creativity,” said Sister Rita Giaretta, one of the nuns at the Caserta safe house, where some 370 women — mostly from Nigeria — have found refuge in the past 20 years. “It is highly liberating.”
In cooperation with social workers, local institutions, and embassies, the nuns assist the women in getting new documents, necessary for a new start.
“Once they have documents, we tell them to walk with their heads held high,” Sister Giaretta said. As for the traffickers, she said, “They have to fear you, we tell them, you don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
The women leave the shelter whenever they feel ready.
“We just give her a hand in the most difficult phase and then help them take flight,” Sister Giaretta said.
Dozens of safe houses run by Catholic nuns have sprung up in recent years throughout Italy — and in many other countries — to provide shelter to the victims of human trafficking for sexual exploitation.
The homes are a sort of archipelago of aid for the victims of what Sister Eugenia Bonetti, the coordinator of the Counter-Trafficking Office of the Italian Union of Major Superiors, described as “atrocious, modern-day slavery.”
Italy alone has about 100 of these shelters, most in convents, run by 250 nuns from 28 congregations, many with a missionary background.
Sister Bonetti, whose office coordinates the safe houses in Italy, said the shelters’ strength was in their shared mission. “Our force is the network, we work in communion, that is our characteristic,” she said.
The network provides security too — protection against the traffickers and exploiters, both for the women trying to leave the sex trade and the nuns assisting them.
Sister Bonetti is a tireless lobbyist, working to raise awareness and gain support and resources to counter the lucrative trade. In Italy, nuns joined civil society associations to successfully petition for laws to better assist women caught in the sex industry.
Legislation drafted in 1998 provides a six-month renewable residence permit to women who leave prostitution and avoid any criminal association, as long as they follow a social reintegration program in a shelter or rehabilitation center. The permits can eventually be made permanent.
The nuns’ mission is a daunting one. The International Labor Organization estimates that 20.9 million people are in forced labor worldwide; of these, 22 percent are trafficked for sexual exploitation.
Traffickers are constantly shifting strategies to protect their financial interests, which are estimated to amount to billions of dollars feeding an underworld of illegal activities.
“Traffickers are smart and organized,” Sister Bonetti said. “We have to be even more so.”
Aside from providing tangible assistance to women, the shelters provide psychological and spiritual care, as well as the nurturing of the nuns.
Somewhat more challenging can be breaking the control the traffickers have over the women. For some Nigerian women, the handlers’ threats of violence and black magic spells are immensely effective at keeping them under control, particularly if the women fear that their family members might be harmed if they do not do as they are told.
The women are often watched over by former prostitutes called Mamans, who have become part of the trafficking chain and who use the same harsh tactics to keep them in line.
“International organizations have found that one third of the controllers are women, so we must not make straightforward sexual distinctions, because none of them work,” said Margaret Archer, the president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, at a symposium last week. In 2013, Pope Francis asked the academy to study human trafficking and modern slavery.
The Italian nuns joined forces with other religious congregations in Europe six years ago, as part of the International Network of Consecrated Life Against Trafficking in Persons. The network, known as Talitha Kum, supports women sold into prostitution, but also the many thousands of people — including children — sold into forced labor, slavery or organ trafficking. It also lobbies for better laws to fight human trafficking.
“For us, it’s an important question of spirituality and theology,” said Sister Gabriella Bottani, who coordinates Talitha Kum. “To speak of human trafficking is to listen to the cry of anguish of humanity, it’s to speak of freedom and life and respect for others. It helps us reconsider the importance of life in its entirety.”
The sisters have found a strong advocate in the pope, who has repeatedly pushed to put human trafficking on the world’s moral agenda, which he has described as “a crime against humanity.”
On a recent morning, several Nigerian women at Casa Ruth sat at their sewing stations at Newhope, filling a large order for fabric holders for television remote controls. The cooperative has a gift shop but keeps afloat by making products in bulk — fabric party favors, bags, towel sets — for weddings, communions or conferences. Some women cut, some ironed, some sewed, chatting easily in Italian.
The economic crisis has made it more difficult to help the exploited, Sister Giaretta said. “But we press on. If they don’t get support they risk landing back on the streets.”
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