Our Women’s Empowerment group meets regularly to share their stories, learn life lessons, and for art therapy classes.
During one of our group sessions, a woman shared about how she has a difficult relationship with her daughter. She has a good relationship with her son, but not with her daughter. One time when she came to the group, she shared about how her daughter was nearly trafficked. Her daughter and a friend went to a café where they met a beautiful, well-dressed woman. She bought them the most expensive food. After eating, the woman took these teenage girls to the mall and bought them clothes, shoes and an iPhone.
As time went by, the teenage girls trusted this woman, but the mom was suspicious of her. Eventually the daughter wanted to move in with this woman. One day, one of their friends who had moved in with this woman called the other girls and begged them not to trust this woman. She asked the girls to help her as she and some other girls had been taken to Turkey.
One of the girls told her mom what has been going on with this woman. They shared that they were given a box and they had to hide it and this woman would pay them 20,000tg ($42). The girls would do this on a regular basis but they didn’t ask what was in the box. When the mother went to the police station to talk about the girls in Turkey, she didn’t receive any help. After the mother went to the police, the woman disappeared.
We are so thankful that these girls weren’t trafficked by this woman. It is an ongoing battle as these traffickers are looking for children from vulnerable families- like this one. Through this story we realize the importance of teaching about the Awareness of Anti – human trafficking.
