Source: Tony Blair Faith Foundation
Posted by Ian Linden on Mon, 14/05/2012 - 4:12pm
Sophie Hayes told her story of being trafficked to Italy in the Palazzo San Callisto in Trastevere. It was the first time she had done so in a large formal gathering of Church leaders and workers, NGOs and senior law enforcement officers. By chance I was sitting next to her.
Though she had written a book about her horrific experiences, relating them in this setting brought her to tears. She was being interviewed by Julie Etchingham, the UK's ITN presenter on News at Ten, with gentleness and sensivity. But nothing could soften the impact on both her and the audience.
Her distress continued through the following session when Sister Imelda Poole showed pictures of abandoned Albanian children. Sophie's story and courage made for a profoundly emotional time for all in the room: a story of betrayal, appalling violence, utter desolation and final rescue from a hospital bed by her parents.
The story brought the scattered statistics on human trafficking to life in all their rawness. It achieved even more than what it was meant to do: to reveal the depths of male violence to women, and the emotional and psychological trauma it caused, the unspeakable brutality of sexual trafficking. And yet it also raised an important dilemma: was it fair on her? Was her willingness to contribute powerfully to raising awareness of this new slave trade creating another form of vulnerability, opening her to a very different, and understandable, form of exploitation? Or is this a paternalist presumption which risks demeaning her decision to "give voice" to her pain and her commitment to a cause?
I found it difficult to answer these questions. More difficult still to ease the ordeal for her in any way - a vain desire resulting from being so close to her as she bravely continued. Telling the story made her relive the events, the violence, emotional isolation, the memory of dissociation brought on by the unbearable reality she was living. 'It wasn't me', she said. But this was her, with a room of some sixty people, a Cardinal and bishops hanging on her words as she tried to stop the tears coming.
I'd once allowed a Filppina woman to speak to a big audience about a military attack on her village during the Marcos era. She had re-lived it. Midway into her presentation she collapsed by the microphone. My immediate thought was that she'd had a massive heart attack and died. But it was just pure shock. She told me later she could see the faces of the soldiers breaking into her home again and remembered all that came after. It was her first time too and I should have known better.
Perhaps that induction informed my anxiety. But it occurred to me that this kind of dilemma goes far beyond imprudence or the propriety of particular reactions to emotion. As a matter of fact, I think we are hard-wired for tears. A Mahler symphony can get them running down the cheeks without any great emotional upheaval. And blubbing can occur when you least expect it.
The same dilemma informs much wider, much more objective, questions posed to those working against sexual trafficking. Nobody knows more about the traffickers and their operation than the trafficked. Nobody has more information to bring them to justice. Yet nobody is more frightened and reluctant to do so - often for very good reason: threats of reprisals against family members and themselves.
So what are the police to do? Those in the Palazzo were as far from stereotypes as imaginable; sensitive to the demands of pastoral care and "victim-centred" in their approach. OK, there is a degree of selection in those officers passionate enough to take up such specialist roles, hardly conducive to rapid career advancement. There have been crass examples of police failure to listen to victims. But these law enforcement officers led the debate quite naturally. On the other side of Sophie was a police woman who soon had a tissue out and an arm round her.
The answer here is perhaps to reach a consensus on when and how police get access to potential witnesses and when ordinary security needs boosting to levels of witness protection. Sister Eugenia Bonnetti showed pictures of an African woman murdered by her captors (as well as one whose child was blessed by an ailing John Paul II). The answer is surely Government-backed agreements on standards of conduct by all, where protection of the victim is balanced with the moral imperative to convict the victimiser. Such agreements should be at least EU-wide.
The Church has too often shown scant regard for the law in sexual abuse cases in the past. So it is a delight to see this totally reversed in the interest of protecting the rising tide of trafficked people today increasingly through the work of Women Religious, the Nuns. Sister Imelda, from Albania and those like her with long experience, will know where that vital balance should lie. There will always be a presumption for the priority of pastoral care. The police in specialist sexual trafficking units acknowledge and support that. But the moral dilemmas aren't going to go away. Fortunately there are some wonderful people grappling with them. Sister Imelda will be the guest speaker for Face to Faith’s human trafficking videoconference today. And what a privilege for Face to Faith to be able to tell this story through Sister Imelda to schools around the world: the story of the dark side of globalisation and the role of faith in resistance to it.
Ian Linden, Director of Policy
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