women used in prostitution wait for customers in mumbai's red-light district. They face routine violence from pimps and customers, a wide range of diseases and adverse health effects.
volve itself in rescuing unless circumstances allow.
Curniski has a colleague, a private investigator, who was
involved in rescuing a young Ukrainian woman from a “
normal suburban house” in Italy where she was found with chains
around her neck and just enough mobility to move from the
bed to the toilet and bathtub. She was taken back to Ukraine
to be cared for. But even if they are rescued, “rehabilitation of
these girls is really, really difficult,” Curniski comments.
“The traumatization of people who have been trafficked is
so horrendous,” adds MacMillan. “It’s one thing to be rescued.
It’s another thing to go out and live your remaining life.”
“The Church,” she says, “has to look at trafficking not as
a rescue mission but as a systemic issue in our world. It’s about
poverty, about gender, about the need for gender equality.”
pHo To CRedi T: ka Y CHeRnUsH FoR THe U.s. s Ta Te depaRTmen T
THE CHURCH’S ROLE
What business does the church have in the seamy underworld
of trafficking, a world that McIntosh describes as the “
hideous underbelly of humanity”? People often ask, he notes,
where God is in the face of such evil. But the real question
“is not where God is but where are our brothers and sisters?
Where are God’s people?”
In the story of the Good Shepherd, he points out, Jesus
WEEKEND OF PRAYER
Perhaps no denomination in Canada has done more than The salvation army to help the victims of human traffick- ing as well as to build awareness of the issue. on the last
weekend of september, salvationists around the world as well as
people from many other denominations joined in a weekend of
prayer with the theme “more precious Than silver.”
• at one corps, worship included a Coffee Bean Litany. each
person was given a bean to chew on during a responsive
reading. an example: “we pray for the children who have
not been able to experience a childhood.” Response: “we
taste the bitterness of their slavery.”
• an individual did a run in chains to demonstrate the seriousness of the problem, garnering media attention along the
way ( www.run4therescue.com).
• The prairie division youth council did a Freedom walk at a
camp, including a series of thought-provoking experiences
of slavery such as being “lured” behind a red curtain and
“ordered” to surrender any cellphones and to enter a cold
shed while others enjoyed a campfire. participants later debriefed at the campfire over fair trade smores.
• ken pedlar of kingston, ont., notes one of the ways the
power of prayer was evident from that weekend. (pedlar has
travelled to Bolivia twice with international Justice mission
and recently led a team of Canadian justice professionals to
train Bolivian police, prosecutors and judges.) pedlar says
“Fifteen girls had just been rescued that day by iJm staff from
a particularly brutal brothel in southeast asia.” n
