Part 2: Breaking the Culture of Silence
Sunday 9th May, 2010
Sunitha Krishnan fights modern day slavery and has formed an anti trafficking organisation, Prajwala India. Her focus is on individuals, especially children, who have been sold into the sex slave trade. She speaks out for the voiceless, nameless, isolated people who endure torture everyday. Victims of the men who buy them, sooner or later they give up hope on people like you and me. One day they accept their exploitation.
Sunitha’s challenge is to help these girls to get power from the pain. To date she has rescued more than 3,200 girls from sexual slavery. One third of rescues are HIV positive.
She has discovered that these girls can be trained in numerous trades that were once seen as the domain of men, such as carpentry and welding. In restoring their dignity and gaining confidence, they can thrive in a male dominated world and not be afraid.
As an anti trafficking worker Sunitha has been beaten up 14 times and is herself a survivor of gang rape. She has lost staff who have been murdered. She finds the biggest challenge to helping victims of sexual trafficking is the way society blocks the knowledge of what is happening to these children from as young as 3 years old. Many of the young children she finds have been abandoned, cast aside as useless, their bodies mutilated. Too often these little people, broken beyond repair, die of Aids and horrific injuries.
Of the trafficked survivors she works with she says, they need your compassion, they need your empathy, they need your acceptance. Ply your mind for one way you can break your culture of silence. Accept them as human beings who deserve our support.
The culture of silence is one that haunts all acts of sexual abuse and violence.