Go Beyond

Kolkata, India

Throughout this week, our team will meet with different ministries and organizations that assist young girls rescued from the commercial sex trade. The vast majority of these girls were sold to or kidnapped by sex traffickers. Some of these girls were sold or betrayed by close family members, including parents. It’s hard to imagine how family members could do such a thing, but the story is all too common among the girls who end up in a world they never imagined existed. Some of the girls that end up in India’s brothels were duped to leave their homes by individuals who promised to find them honest employment that would enable them to help their poor families. However, once they had left homes, they were instead sold to work in brothels.

There is no way for us to imagine the mixture of fear, disappointment, and anger that these young victims feel when they realize that they have been caught in a trafficker’s net. The psalmist described the modus operandi of the wicked in this way, “He sits in ambush in the villages; in hiding places he murders the innocent. His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless; he lurks in ambush like a lion in a thicket; he lurks that he may seize the poor; he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net” (Ps. 10:8-9). And then, the real horror begins for these girls. They are repeatedly raped in their first hours in captivity until all vestiges of their self-esteem have been destroyed. They are also beaten, verbally abused, warned that their families will be harmed if they refuse to cooperate, and even drugged into compliance. In the words of the Psalmist, “The helpless are crushed, sink down, and fall by his might” (Ps. 10:10).

It is not long before these young victims are smothered by despair and resign themselves to living in hell. Often kept in small and crowded rooms with other victims, they service the sexual appetites of as many as twenty customers per night — repeatedly raped and abused in every way. They are not offered any protection against carriers of sexually transmitted infections and must do whatever they are told to do, however foul or disgusting. The customers they are forced to service, like those who hold them captive, have no regard for the welfare of these young girls. They are closely guarded, beaten if they complain, and killed if they fail to comply. One young girl said that there were only two ways to leave the brothel where she was forced to work — by being sold to work in another brothel or by being killed. Life in the brothel or death were the only options on her horizon.

I cannot begin to imagine a life where my only options would be to continue to suffer abuse at the hands of those who entered through my door or to escape through death’s door. That is a chilling description of despair. Soon, even weeping is whipped into submission and there are no more tears left to cry. This is the world of those who see only two ways out. But, thankfully, the girls we are meeting this week can all testify to a third way out — rescue at the hands of champions of justice whom God uses to “break the arm of the wicked and evildoer” and also to “call his wickedness to account” (Ps. 10:15). God hears the cries of the afflicted and works through those who are committed “to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more” (Ps. 10:18). We must allow God to use us to champion His passion for justice so that those living in darkness will always have a way out.