30 nuns from 26 countries attended the conference, and the International Network of Religious Against Trafficking in Persons was formed as a result.  Nuns from non-Christian countries like India also attended.  Among them was Sister Lilitta, who pointed out that as many as 20 million South Asian women were said to have been smuggled to India and forced to work in brothels for a living.  About one fourth of them were under 18 years old when they were trafficked to India.  

She went on to say that trafficking victims exploited as sex workers is as much a social problem as a political one in India.  Under the meticulously stratified caste system, most affected women coming from the “untouchable” backward classes were poor and easily taken advantage of.  On the other hand, however, those who exploited them were upper-class “inviolables”.  Out of fear of antagonizing the rich and powerful, the Indian police prosecuted only 27 of the 685 people arrested on trafficking charges in 2007, a study by the Conference of Religious India showed.

Sister Eugenia Bonetti, who was calling the shots at the conference, had spent 24 years in Kenya before returning to Italy to help young women from Romania, West Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America smuggled to Italy in search for a better future but ended up working as prostitutes.  Out of all these unfortunate women, the plight of those from Nigeria was often the worst, she said. 

In white Europe, black African women are considered second class to blonds from Eastern Europe, and earn only half of what their white counterparts earn for each sexual transaction.  With the meager return, they can hardly repay the debts they owe the traffickers and find themselves perpetually at the mercy of mafia or organized crime rings. 

To Sister Bonetti, women religious were endowed with an extraordinary mission to help victims of human trafficking.  “Women religious will reactivate our communities through our commitment to protect human dignity, fighting human trafficking.  We must be silent witnesses of personal suffering but eloquent denouncers of social justice.”

For trafficking victims suffering from poverty as well as physical abuse, a safe shelter can certainly speed up the healing of the psychological scar.  In Britain, Churches Alert to Sex Trafficking Across Europe (Chaste) and the government-funded Poppy Project Charity have picked a secret location to build safe houses for the estimated 4000 trafficked women in the UK sex industry.

The women, mainly from Russia and Eastern Europe, will be taught English and offered legal advice if necessary.  The idea is to enable them to integrate better with the rest of the community, so that they will be able to find a job and stand on their own feet when they are fit to leave the refuge. 

Besides, having spent time with other trafficking victims, the women will be able to build a support network among themselves.  They will know who or where to turn to when they have problems in the future. As churches scatter around various European countries, those who finally chose to return to their homeland could still conveniently find a source for help in their vicinity.  As Sister Bonetti said, churches “are present all over the world.  There is not a coner of the world where you don’t find sisters.”

Sister Margaret, the Catholic nun running the refuges, also dispelled skeptics’ fear that churches would impose beliefs on victims around things like abortion and contraception. 

“We’re there to support the women in their lives.  We try to see the issues through the women’s eyes”, she said.