{"id":926,"date":"2016-11-17T20:01:41","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T20:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.com\/?p=926"},"modified":"2016-11-17T20:01:41","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T20:01:41","slug":"disowned-by-family-women-rescued-from-indian-brothels-turn-to-counselling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/2016\/11\/17\/disowned-by-family-women-rescued-from-indian-brothels-turn-to-counselling\/","title":{"rendered":"Disowned by family, women rescued from Indian brothels turn to counselling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"prostitution\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Anuradha Nagaraj<\/strong><\/p>\n

At a village counselling centre in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, a woman dressed in a bright pink sari starts the conversation on a bright note. But 10 minutes into her session she is weeping.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ran away from the brothel and came back home 10 years ago but it still seems like yesterday,\u201d the 40-year-old victim of sex trafficking tells her counsellor, Shakuntala Byalla.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like to think about the past but coming back hasn\u2019t been easy either. Even my parents asked why I had come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The woman, who declined to be identified, is one of thousands who are trafficked from in and around Kadiri town in Andhra Pradesh\u2019s Anantapur district to the brothels of Mumbai, New Delhi and Pune every year.<\/p>\n

Agents and gangs prey on the poverty of thousands of women and girls in rural areas, promising them a good job and decent income in other cities before selling them into the sex trade, activists say.<\/p>\n

Many women are rescued or escape – only to return home and face a new struggle to overcome their past and deal with the present.<\/p>\n

In Gandlapenta village, counsellor Byalla is their only friend and confidant.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of them were practically sold by their own parents, who then live off the money the trafficked girl sends home,\u201d Byalla said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they come back, the shock of being rejected by their mother and father drives them to despair. They lose the will to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

India alone is home to 40 per cent of the world\u2019s estimated 45.8 million slaves, according to a 2016 global slavery index published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation.<\/p>\n

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were nearly 5,500 cases of forced prostitution in 2014 across India, which does not differentiate between human trafficking and sex work in its anti-trafficking laws.<\/p>\n

EASY TARGETS<\/strong><\/p>\n

A recent government survey identified Kadiri, where Chittoor, Kadappa and Anantapur districts meet, as a hot spot for human trafficking in Andhra Pradesh, the coastal state which is home to India\u2019s space research centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany women from the Lambada tribe in particular fall victim to traffickers,\u201d senior district official Kona Sasidhar told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only are the women very pretty, they are also very poor, making them easy targets for agents. We have started a crackdown to stop this.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 2016 survey by Anantapur district officials identified 6,200 women as \u201cbeing susceptible to trafficking\u201d due to poverty, a lack of awareness about trafficking and drought in agriculture-dependent areas.<\/p>\n

The woman in the pink sari, who left her toddler behind with her mother when she was trafficked to Mumbai, was one of them.<\/p>\n

Wiping her tears, she told Byalla about the woman from her neighbourhood who promised her a job as a maid but instead sold her to a brothel in Kamathipura, Mumbai\u2019s red light district.<\/p>\n

In graphic detail, she described the \u201cgharwali\u201d (madam) who ran the brothel, the first time she was raped and how she managed to hide a few rupees in the seams of her clothes.<\/p>\n

However it was when she started talking about her family that the tears flowed down her cheeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are very poor and lived off the money I sent. I still take care of them but we don\u2019t live under the same roof,\u201d she said as Byalla held her hand.<\/p>\n

“SPOILT WOMEN”<\/strong><\/p>\n

For 10 years, the counsellor has been listening to women who \u201cleft home as adolescents and came back looking different\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are suddenly perceived as modern, spoilt women and have nowhere to hide,\u201d said Byalla.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nail polish, hair cuts, clothes and urban slang gives them away. They come to the centres with anger, frustration and guilt. For years, I have listened and seen that nothing has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, a 28-year-old touched Byalla\u2019s feet in the counselling centre asking for help to get her own house. The woman said she had thought of killing herself.<\/p>\n

Byalla admonished her gently.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to fight with everyone for everything. It is normal,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Byalla\u2019s counselling centre is one of six in the region that are run by the non-profit Rural Development Trust. Between April 2015 and March 2016, more than 600 women sought help at the centres, many of them victims of trafficking, others of domestic abuse.<\/p>\n

Byalla also sends out teams to 124 villages identified in 2004 as having high rates of migration. They go looking for trafficked victims and also those on the verge of migrating.<\/p>\n

The Gandlapenta centre also offers vocational training based on the belief that if women are taught a skill, which they can earn a living from, they will be less likely to fall victim to traffickers.<\/p>\n

\u201cRehabilitation of victims is a big concern and we are in the process of forming small self-help groups in villages for these women,\u201d Sasidhar said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are being given access to banks and soft skill training will follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the women who go to Byalla are directed to the vocational centre, where they are trained to make sanitary pads, incense sticks, notebooks and taught tailoring.<\/p>\n

Some stay on after their training and earn a monthly salary to run their homes.<\/p>\n

Byalla spoke to the 28-year-old about the possibility of learning a skill and working. She nodded eagerly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to be strong because I have a daughter to raise,\u201d she told Byalla.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult but the one thing I look forward to is meeting you. I feel happy sharing my feelings with you. I am relieved of some of my pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomson Reuters Foundation<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anuradha Nagaraj At a village counselling centre in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, a woman dressed in a bright pink sari starts the conversation on a bright note. But 10 minutes into her session she is weeping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}