DO WE NEED SHELTER HOMES FOR VICTIMS OF SEX TRAFFICKING?

The last few months has seen lot of adverse reports on the conditions of shelter homes across the country. At about the same time during this period lobbying and advocacy for the comprehensive Anti Human Trafficking Bill reached its peak after being passed in the Loksabha (lower house of the Indian parliament)  and the opponents of the Bill spoke vehemently against the ‘shelter home/ protection home’ focus of the Bill citing it as protectionist. Interestingly even a few anti trafficking advocates also raised their concerns about shelter homes as ‘incarceration’ and recommended community based rehabilitation models.

It is in this context that one is raising this question ‘do we need shelter homes for victims of sex trafficking’?

To respond to this question we need to understand, who is a sex trafficked victim? What are the damages that she has been subjected to in the process of being trafficked? What are her needs? Does she play a role in tackling the organized crime of human trafficking?

Let us be very clear at the outset itself, when we are speaking about a sex trafficked victim we are not confusing her with a person who has willingly chosen ‘sex work’ as her livelihood choice. Also it is pertinent to mention that the Indian Law does not recognize anything called as “sex work” what it recognizes is ‘prostitution’ which is defined as sexual exploitation or abuse of persons for commercial purpose.

Having said this, in a given situation of commercial sexual exploitation it is very difficult to make out the difference as most sex trafficked victims are indoctrinated by the traffickers to say that they are in that place by their willing choice and that nobody forced/coerced or lured them into this situation. And then you also have a lot of persons who might have come into this due to ‘constrained choices’ and over a period of time normalized the experience of being exploited.   

The victims are brought from different parts of the country on the pretext of love, marriage, job offers or film roles and are then threatened or intimidated to accept sexual exploitation. Once raped by a customer, most victims lose any motivation to get back to their original life. This is largely because of the patriachal gender stereotype of ‘lost honor’ for a rape victim. The victim tends to believe  ‘she has lost the most essential component in her life' and that there is no point to go back as she will be rejected and shunned by her community. The guilt that somewhere she was responsible for her situation is also heavy on her soul. This guilt is further aggravated by the fact that the keepers and beneficiaries of the trade keep reinforcing that they had only helped her when ‘she’ sought support during her times of difficulty.    

Once into the world of prostitution the life of a person is about fulfilling daily targets of entertaining customers by offering her body for sex and ensuring regular revenue for the brokers/pimps/keepers/traffickers. In this bargain she has to adopt all coping mechanisms to survive and sustain which essentially means usage of alcohol or resort to substance abuse. Most victims prefer to be intoxicated while entertaining a customer perhaps for the simple reason to forget the humiliation of indignity to their bodies and souls. The pain of multiple abortions, the humiliation of serving varied sexual needs of the buyers, the constant fear of being identified, the threat of bodily damages and health ailments and the indignity of being treated as ‘just a piece of flesh’ over a period of time gets numbed in the struggle to move on.

What is the impact of all this? If a one-time incident of abuse or sexual assault leaves a lifetime of trauma and nightmare, what could be the impact of daily rape by multiple men for a prolonged period of time, combined with helplessness and hopelessness to exit the exploitative situation by real and perceived fears.

Suffice to say that physical damages of sexually transmitted infections, cervical damages, damages to reproductive tract or the traumatic brain injuries is nothing compared to the deep-rooted psychological damages that such a world of exploitation leaves in a human being. The worst of-course being that the person believes that she is not a ‘victim’ and has normalized the experience of being exploited.

Is it possible therefore to just remove such a person from a place of exploitation and relocate her to a community and expect her to start a new life?

Well for those who do not understand trauma and its impact, they might just say ‘Why not? Provide her some community-based rehabilitation and she can start afresh!  As if none of the above has ever happened and you can just switch on or switch off from a deeply painful experience!

Anybody with a minimum sense of empathy will recognize that there is a need for interim care after a person is removed from the place of exploitation and before she is reintegrated back to the society.

So if an interim care has to be provided what should be the structure of that support?

I would say the Immoral Traffic Persons (Prevention) Act, 1956 was way ahead of its time. It recognized among other things that such victims would require specialized care and support in the form of ‘Protective Homes’, very clearly stating that the person is a ‘victim’ and not a ‘criminal defendant’

I have heard words such as ‘incarceration’ or ‘prison’ being used with reference to Protective Homes or Shelter Homes this to me indicates the person’s absolute lack of understanding of what it is to be living as a criminal defendant in a prison. And what a prison really looks and feels like. (Ask a person like me who had the privilege of living in Bangalore Central Jail for a few weeks as an under-trial!)   

When a person from the word go is accused of a crime not just in perception and attitude but also in black & white on paper, every step one takes within the confinement space is reinforcing that tag. Interaction with any person who has undergone a prison sentence either as an under-trial or a convicted offender will reveal the sense of guilt and shame that is infused into the correctional mechanism. From the living quarters, segregation, clothes, roll call, the way the food is served to the way you are addressed, there is constant reminder that you have committed a crime. Since it is a correctional structure and a person is expected to reflect on the crime they have committed and repent, one cannot really make any judgmental comment

But does the Protective Home/Shelter Home behave like a prison? Well I would say the only common component would be ‘safe custody’. And with that any common connect ends.

While the ‘prison’ reinforces multiple times in all its processes the crime committed and need for repentance, the Protective Home strives hard to make a person understand that she is a victim of grievous crime and she needs all the care and protection to build an enabling environment to start a new life.

It goes without saying, when an acutely traumatized individual who has normalized the process of exploitation enters such a ‘safe space’ she is unable to decipher the ‘rightness’ of such a space. Influenced by her keepers she will put all her efforts to escape this place. Most studies across the world have clearly shown that acute trauma affects the cognitive control of a person seriously retarding the person’s ability to cope with the situation.

Here is a person who is traumatized, is controlled by people who benefit from her body, is threatened/pressurized/indoctrinated to believe that life outside exploitation will be harmful to her, how she is supposed to behave in a safe space when she herself suffers from serious trust deficit?

Any Protective Home or a shelter puts in processes and structures for ‘safe home’ which is away from negative influences, and may look akin to ‘safe custody’ to deal with both external and internal challenges. While the external challenges mostly deal with the keepers/traffickers/pimps/organizers who live on the earnings of sexual exploitation and are hell bent to retrieve the revenue they are losing everyday by somehow getting back the woman rescued to their fold, the entire internal challenge deal with this traumatized person who is currently unable to trust the support that the ‘safe home’ has extended and feels compelled to go back to the familiar world of exploitation.

The perceived threat of the traffickers/keepers/pimps/organizers is ‘real’ as there is not only a revenue loss for all the days that the person is kept in the safe home, but the greater threat is if the person recovers from her trauma and starts healing she might even seek justice for the criminal violation she has been subjected. So for them it is a matter of life and death to get this person back.

There is no way, that a person who has been living in a world of sex slavery and has practically normalized it, can recover from that situation if she is not physically removed from the place of exploitation and kept in a safe place far away from any negative influences. Study any ‘drop in center’ operating in different parts of the world for women in prostitution. Check the rate of recovery in such places. How many women actually take an exit path after coming to a drop in center where you can come and go whenever you please. I would say hardly 1%. Living in exploitation and facing it everyday, does not leave any room for exit. One is sucked deeper and deeper into first being exploited and then exploiting others to survive. 

So for how long should a person be kept away from negative influences? While each person has its unique pace for recovery, in my experience, a period of 1-2 years with all therapeutic processes in place, is a good time for most victims to become survivors.

Does it work?  For most it works, for some it does not. And that some might also include persons who form deep attachments with their exploiters to survive and who suffer from Stockholm’s syndrome. And there are some others, unfortunately who have gone past the point of return…

Shelter Homes/Protective Homes are a vital component in providing a recovery space for any victim of sex trafficking and facilitating a safe journey for their rehabilitation. A big part of the prosecution depends on this person’s recovery to testify in the court of law against the organized crime of human trafficking especially when material evidences are rare and few. Any access to negative influence may completely make the person go hostile in the court. So a world free of Protective Homes/Shelter Homes is a world filled with trafficking with impunity.

There is no doubt that good shelter homes/protective homes are a need of the hour. The effort should be to, not discredit and create a hostile environment for homes to function but to push for better standards of care for safeguarding the rights of the persons it serves.

The everyday challenges of hostility within and outside is good enough for people running shelter homes, without adding more of it with our ignorance. Our focus should be to put in place robust monitoring systems, adequate resources to take care of the complicated needs of such victims, openness to provide viable and sustainable economic options, compassion and empathy to reintegrate the survivors as a matter of right and not as charity.

Somewhere out there if you listen carefully…you can hear the muted pleas of millions of victims of sex trafficking languishing in hell holes…they need a way out…they need a safe way out that will not put them back in the path of harm once again.