May9

It’s in our backyard

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That’s what shocked Dr. Katharine (Kate) Bushnell in the nineteenth century.  Authorities wouldn’t believe her stories of girls enticed, held captive, and abused in the pristine forests of northern Wisconsin. And today we’re hearnig such a story right in a Cleveland neighborhood- three girls held captive for ten years and no one knew?

For the last five years — off and on– I’ve been writing Kate’s story. A valiant, fearless, unconventional woman living in the Victorian era, it was a lot more difficult for Kate to talk about prostitution, rape, brothels, bondage then than it is in today’s far too open society. The pendulum swings from one side to the other. As the first book Boundless reaches completion, I’ll be writing more about what I’ve found — not only what’s happening today, but how society dealt with “trafficking” more than one hundred years ago.

Share your thoughts and stories.  It’s not a pleasant subject, but it is among us, and I believe God cares about those who are caught in this desperate quickisand.

 

 

 

 

Jan14

Changing directions

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I’ve shared my joys and concerns over my trip to South Africa — and if new issues arise I’ll get back to it.  But I want to begin sharing what I see going on as threats to women around the world.  Check out the progress of Boundless, my new book about Dr. Katherine Bushnell, who spent her life trying to release women from cruelty, trafficking and disabling attitudes.

Here are two short pieces about women’s response to recent acts of violence:

In the Muslim world, society often judges a victim of rape, rather than the perpetrator.  In spiet of this, women in Turkey are now rallying around a 26-year-old mother of two who killed a man who repeatedly raped her while her husband was away on a seasonal job.  She shot the rapist as he again returned to force his way into her house.  She then turned herself in to the police, saying she preferred to die but had cleansed her honor for her children’s sake.  Intercede for the protection and salvation of this woman and her family.  Also uphold Turkish politicians who wrestle with women’s issues in a harsh male-dominated environment. TWO

India (MNN) –
Remember that rape case in New Delhi that got international attention recently?
Six men assaulted a woman aboard a moving bus, and she later died from her
injuries. The defendants’ lawyer blames her for the attack. “That attitude
is very common in India. To blame a woman for dressing inappropriately or being
in a certain place at a certain time: these are just not constructive, not helpful attitudes.” Brent Hample of India Partners says the culture is a big part of the problem. “Even before they’re born,girls are discriminated against.” If they make it past birth, young girls
are often sold into sexual slavery. “Pray that God would do a miracle within the culture of India [and] within the people of India — within their hearts.”

Jun10

Trafficking is big business

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Boundless, Book one of my two part series about Dr. Katharine Bushnell, is at the editor.  I’m starting book two and working through hundreds of pages of research which I’ve done over the last six years.  Reading Katharine’s report about young girls of fourteen or sixteen forced to live in the chaklas—brothels inside the British military bases in India in the eighteen hundreds, is just as heart-wrenching as modern stories of such abuse.  It’s encouraging today  that many organizations are trying to help these girls – the public is aware,  though not enough really care.

Katharine and her colleague were sent to India ALONE to expose the military’s nefarious practices. She made a difference—but it never ends.  Read the uplifting story of something happening in India today.

Trafficking is big business

Traffickers target poor families.  They say they have contacts to get their daughter a job.  The unsuspecting girl is taken to the city where she doesn’t’ realize what is about to happen until it’s too late.  She is sold to a brother for about $1000 . She is kept there under guard.

The girls have as many as 20 customers per night.  Each pays about 500 rupees of less (just $10).  Eventually the girls lose all hope.  They think that this is how it’s going to be forever.  They don’t feel they can go back to their home village with the stigma of what they have done.  Those trafficked at young ages often don’t even know where their home village is located.

Several of our partners have “after-care homes,” safe places where rescued girls are taken.  As I talked with the girls, the difference the center makes was so obvious—it was like night and day.  Those recently rescued were sullen, staying at the edges of the room, not saying a word.  Those who had been in the home for a while were talkative. . .  like you would expect a teenage girl to be.  But, it took months, sometimes years, of loving care to bring them to that place. There is nothing easy about this kind of work.

                                                                           Bob Savage,

                                                                           Partners International

                                                                           WWW.PARTNERSINTL.ORG

May15

Trafficking denied in 19th century

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When Dr. Kate Bushnell started helping prostitutes in Denver, later Chicago, and then discovered girls caught in “white slavery” society denied her findings.  In the Victorian era even mentioning the word “prostitute” was offensive.

Now 100 years later it’s still happening–in far greater numbers, and we don’t seem to be shocked anymore.

Here’s a report from some Jordanian friends who’ve been trying to help in the camps where thousands of Syrians have fled the war in their homeland.  They’ve been trying to provide food and water to refugees living in camps on dry, barren land.  UNICEF has recently told them they can no longer provide water since they have run out of money.  This camp has now grown to 150,000 people. So, desperate families resort to desperate measures.  Read on:

Another form of chaos that has begun to build up is the “business” of selling Syrian women (primarily the younger, paler ones with green or blue eyes) to older men (50-80 year old) in Jordan. It’s hard to imagine a family letting go of their daughter to a stranger for money but desperate times will call for desperate measures…measures that we will probably never understand or comprehend. In a recent news report, a family in dire need of milk to feed their hungry infant had no choice but to sacrifice their teenage daughter to marriage for a dowry. What was even more shocking was that the help was provided by a local  NGO based  in Jordan that is setup to provide food, cash and medicine – not husbands! The director of this NGO offered to help find their daughter a suitable husband for money. The mother of this child would have never considered such a random arrangement before in Syria, but life in Jordan has become so unbearable that the sacrifice of her teenage daughter had to be made. How else would this family be able to pay for rent and milk for their starving baby?

Another story tells about a 19 year old who was given over to a young, Jordanian man in exchange for a dowry. Soon after her family returned to Syria, the man took his new bride to a brothel to make money off of her as a prostitute. 

Dr. Kate Bushnell discovered similar desperation over one hundred years ago as she exposed white slavery in dens in northern Wisconsin, “chaklas” for British soldiers during the Indian Raj, and drug houses in San Francisco and Hong Kong.

I’ve completed Boundless, the first of two books on Kate’s life—a woman of valor, perseverance, and boundless love for God and His abused daughters.  She fought the battle singlehanded in a Victorian culture which denied such abuse existed.  Even though we know the existence of wide-spread trafficking, we seem helpless to limit, much less eradicate the crime. Is it that we don’t really care?

Apr10

Trafficking in India

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Book Two of the Katharine Bushnell series takes place in India. Kate and her friend Bess are asked to secretly visit and expose the sequestering of young girls in the British cantonments for the soldiers’  pleasure.

Now 125 years later young Indian girls are still being bought, stolen, kidnapped– kept prisoner– for the sexual pleasures of men who care nothing about their lives or the purpose for which God created them.

I read this on Mission Network News yesterday:

Rody Rodeheaver of IN  Network USA says India contains a large percentage of the 27 million men, women and children trapped in modern-day slavery around the world.  It has more than 1.2 million child prostitutes and hundreds of children are trafficked from Nepal to Mumbai each week.

Last year, around 250 kids were recued along the Nepal-India border.  That’s where a home supported by IN Network is saving little girls from being trafficked.

Prasanna and Arpana Khaling began Sano Diyo (Little Lighhouse) in 2002. They had just graduatd from Bible College and were seeking God’s will for their lives.

They could’ve done any number of things, but their lives were intersected by two little girls who ended up on their doorstep,” says Rodeheaver. “And they saw, in these two little girls, the opportunity to make a difference.”

What started with two girls has grown to 35.  They’ve been saved from an unspeakable future and are now getting warm meals, the Gospel and a life-changing education.

Mar10

The Greatest Social Failure of our Era

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The Greatest Social Failure of Our Era

As I write Boundless I am more aware that the problem of the treatment of women reaches far back into history and across the globe.  But it seems everywhere today there is a growing consciousness of this evil.  Below is an interesting commentary from the Denver Post by David Rathkopf .

            The larger looming story is our continuing failure to protect women of their rights.  The U. S. in particular is going to face some very difficult choices in the years ahead on this point.,  Are we so eager for closure in Afghanistan or stability elsewhere that we are compliant with putting in power regimes that will continue to suppress the majority population, deny them education, deny them protection under the law, allow them to be abused under the protection of barbarous and indefensible “cultural tradition?”  Will countries like India continue their tradition of failing to enforce the law against rapists who prey on their women, as in the case of December’s horrifying Delhi gang rape?  Will the gunmen who targeted Malala in Pakistan continue to seek to intimidate those who emulate the    courageous schoolgirl?

 

            My fear is that the answer will be “yes” and that in the year ahead we will see even the worlds’ most progressive and enlightened powers continue to feed the greatest global social failure of our age, by looking away and accepting the unacceptable.  Davbid Rathkopf

How can we fail to remember how much Jesus cared for the spiritual and physical welfare of women.  How we forget his tender concern for Mary Magdalene at the tomb?  Woman, why are you crying?

 

Feb22

Trafficking in LA

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It’s been some time since I’ve posted on this blog.  I’m shifting from focusing primarily on South Africa to the book I’ve been writing for some time.  Tentatively named Boundless it tells the fictionalized story of Dr. Katharine Bushnell, a nineteenth century activist who exposed sexual trafficking and faced personal danger as she rescued women who were bound.

Here’s a quote from EXODUS NOW which works with women and girls trafficked in our own country. The EXODUS team worked the streets of the French quarter where many prostitutes and trafficked women were brought during Super Bowl.

“On Super Bowl Sunday, we rejoiced to read a powerful testimony, on Feb. 1st, given by a woman who had formerly been trafficked for sex during such an event 2.  Her story is eye-opening, ringing as a public alarm on sex trafficking during the Super Bowl. The next day, we had the privilege of meeting with a woman who was a survivor herself. She boldly made the decision to flee a life of sexual exploitation and began a new life working to restore women and even do outreach in the same strip club she had been working at.

“God showed me that I was chained—and the chains were all just lies of the enemy,” she explained,“…But I had the key all along—it was Jesus. It’s like there was a key hole with light leaking through, and I just had to follow that light.”

Her words were full of praise and love for the One who had forgiven her and set her free. She laughed and cried as she told us of her family, her past struggles, and her future ambitions. She is a woman who holds prayer and love as the first weapons in her artillery and explained that it was only through them that her escape was possible.

On the final night before our departure back to Kansas City, we carried out our last outreach to the same strip clubs on Bourbon St. This time, it was pouring rain outside, and the street was much emptier as the Super Bowl crowd had departed.  With the decrease in customers and chaos, both the bouncers and the women in the clubs opened their hearts to our team. Tears were shed as some of the women shared about their difficulties and at one point, half of us were praying for a bouncer outside one of the clubs, while the other half of the team was praying for a woman inside.”