Nuns pose as prostitutes to save victims of sex trafficking
Human trafficking is a grave problem.
According to the International Labor Organization, , including children, live in slavery worldwide, many of them trafficked by gangs for sex work and unskilled labor.
A network of nuns is to solve the problem, according to its chairman.
The group, take actions that include dressing up like prostitutes to infiltrate brothels worldwide in an effort to rescue victims of sex trafficking.聽
The initiative launched in 2004聽by British investment banker John Studzinski, consists of 1,100 sisters, and currently operates from 80 countries. 聽
鈥淚鈥檓 not trying to be sensational, but I鈥檓 trying to underscore the fact this is a world that has lost innocence ... where dark forces are active,鈥� Studzinski, a vice chairman of US investment bank The Blackstone Group recently he told the Trust Women Conference on women's rights and trafficking hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 鈥淭hese are problems caused by poverty and equality, but it goes well beyond that.鈥�
Besides going undercover as sex workers and rescuing trafficking victims, the team has also been raising money to buy children who are sold into slavery by their parents in places like Africa, Asia, and South America.
鈥淭his is a new network of houses for children around the world who would otherwise be sold into slavery. It is shocking but it is real,鈥� Studzinksi said, .
Human trafficking for labor, as defined by a US federal law in 2000, is 鈥渢he recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.鈥� A parallel definition applies to sex trafficking and coerced prostitution.
In October, the largest-ever FBI sex trafficking sting operation arrested 150 perpetrators and rescued children being exploited in 135 cities across the nation,聽海角大神 reported.
The full scope of human sex trafficking is聽notoriously difficult to track, but the Polaris Project, an organization that works to raise awareness of modern slavery and rehabilitate its victims, said they received聽聽in the US in 2014.聽
础产辞耻迟听聽of the children reported to the聽National Center for Missing & Exploited Children聽are trapped in sexual slavery, the agency reported, up from one in seven in 2013.聽
In the resent past, civil authorities and non-profit organizations have joined聽efforts to combat the scourge of human trafficking and forms of modern-day slavery.聽
But the work of Talitha Kum does have critics.聽
According to Christina Arnold, founder and CEO of Prevent Human Trafficking, the group of nuns, while they mean well, 鈥淢ay be doing more harm than good.鈥�
鈥淲hen you buy the victim, you just drive up the cost for brothel owners or traffickers trying to sell in the future,鈥� Ms.聽.
