“Lord, please send some generous person who will help get me out of this place.”
This was the prayer of a teenage girl, trapped in servitude and forced to work against her will. We found the prayer penciled into the back of a journal she kept during her captivity, and which was used as evidence later in court, right here in the CNMI. God answered her prayer and she was set free.
As I write, people are pausing to pray for victims of human trafficking such as that young woman. February 8 is the International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking, and it also coincides with the feast day of St. Josephine Bakhita who was herself a slave for much of her life. Both St. Josephine and the young woman of the secret scribbled prayer eventually had their case come up before a judge.
As a child of 9 years of age in about 1878, St. Josephine was kidnapped and sold several times as a slave. Eventually she was brought over to Italy from her birthplace of Sudan, and lodged with the Canossian Sisters of Rome while her “owners” were away for a holiday. Upon their return, however, she refused to leave the convent and her case went to court. It was then discovered that slavery had been outlawed in Sudan long before she was even born and therefore it was unlawful for her to have ever been a slave in the first place, whether in Africa or in Europe. She was finally set free.
Here in the United States, a Civil War decided the question of slavery well over a century ago and yet despite what we would like to believe, it is not simply an outdated human rights violation that we only read about in history books. Forced labor, indebted servitude, coerced sexual exploitation—all of these fall under the heading of “Human Trafficking,” and we have laws against such practices. Even still, just as in the case of St. Josephine Bakhita, sometimes the courts need to intervene directly to safeguard the freedoms of individual victims.
Karidat has somewhat unexpectedly found itself on the front lines of defending the dignity and rights of trafficking victims here in the NMI. We accompany victims to legal hearings or assist them to file paperwork, we help them find food and shelter or locate the other resources they need in order to become independent and to begin to take charge of the day to day of their own lives. We partner with other agencies on island who make up the CNMI Human Trafficking Intervention Coalition, formed in 2006 to help identify possible victims and then reach out to them with the services they require and are entitled to under the law.
The staff and volunteers of Karidat have been grateful for these opportunities to play the role of the “generous person” that young woman pleaded for, and you can help, too. Learn to identify the signs of a person who might be a victim:
Do they appear depressed? Are they always in the company of someone who is translating for them? Do they give vague or inconsistent details when telling their story? Do they not have possession of their ID or passport?
And here are some questions you can ask them directly:
Can you leave your house or job whenever you want? Is someone forcing you to do work you do not want to do or are you being paid less than you promised? Is your family being threatened? Does your employer control where you live or lock you in from the outside?*
It is sobering to think of the laws of the CNMI being disregarded today in such degrading ways. We do not believe in slavery and we do not believe in cruelty towards others. We rejected that in our laws and in our customs. And still there are men, women, and even children in our islands who, like St. Josephine had been, are abducted or tricked into performing labor that goes against their dignity, and against their will. They have rights, but like her, they might not yet know them.
Please pray with us for victims, and perpetrators, of human trafficking.
St Josephine Bakhita, pray for us all.
(More information and resources about human trafficking prevention can be found at the US Bishops’ website: usccb.org)
(Love Never Fails is a regular North Star column of Karidat, the social arm of the Diocese of Chalan kanoa. Claire Seelinger Devey is a parishioner of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Cathedral and the Food Bank Coordinator for Karidat)
