The ‘business’ of helping the sexually exploited help themselves. When Moon was 12 weeks old, her birth mother sold her to a local Burmese woman, who raised her like a slave. When Moon (not her real name) was 3 years old, this second “mother” forced her to wash dishes in a restaurant eight hours a day. When Moon turned 13, the woman sold Moon’s virginity to a Western businessman in Thailand. But she fought her way free. A few months later, she wasn’t so lucky. Her second mother blocked the hotel room door after an Indian man paid 30,000 baht ($800) and then beat Moon with a belt until she submitted to sex. She had to be carried home. For 10 days, Moon couldn’t walk. “I felt like throwing up,” she says. “I was repulsed by my ‘mother’ and afraid of men. I was sad and ashamed, because I wasn’t clean.”
A year later, across the border in northern Thailand, the same woman tricked Moon into working at a noodle stand that was in reality a brothel. When Moon refused to comply with her first customer, the brothel owner slapped her and taped her hands to the bed. She shouted, so they forced a ping-pong ball in her mouth and taped it shut. The second night, 15 men used her; the next night, 9; the next, 11. The Johns included men from Thailand, Myanmar, Japan, Korea, India, and the West. The owner’s brother, a policeman, drugged Moon and 10 other captive girls to keep them awake at night. They were threatened with cigarette burns. Moon tried to escape, but the woman owner and her brothers locked her in her room and kept an armed vigil at the brothel. Several times, policemen visited in street clothes and used Moon for free, compliments of the owner. She begged them for help. But they told the owner, who beat Moon and threatened to throw acid on her face. During her time in the brothel, Moon was raped about 100 times. “I cursed every god. But in my heart, I believed someone would come and help me,” Moon says. She was right. After nearly a month in the brothel, the police and International Justice Mission, an evangelical ministry, rescued her. Each year, hundreds of thousands of women and children are prostituted around the globe. Moon was one of an estimated 1 million children who annually enter the multibillion-dollar industry of commercial sexual exploitation, according to UNICEF. In Thailand alone, where prostitution is technically illegal, some 200,000 girls and women are exploited.
Four years ago, missionaries Mark and Christa Crawford in Thailand learned of Moon’s plight. Since then, they’ve introduced Moon to Jesus and tried to help her earn a decent living – a challenge for someone without marketable skills. Moon says that since the Crawford entered her life, “I have realized that I have value and worth. And now that I know God, I can always pray for his help whenever I have a problem.” The Crawford’s are among a growing number of Christians worldwide working to live out the love of Jesus by reaching out to sexually exploited people. They offer counseling, discipleship, and prayer for the wounds of sexual trauma and lead many women to Christ. But after deserting the sex industry, these women also need help supporting themselves and often their families. “The story’s not over because someone is rescued from a brothel or decides to leave a ‘bar,'” says Christa. “It’s only beginning.” Christianity Today found a few cutting-edge organizations around the world that include work opportunities in their model for personal and spiritual restoration. Whether it’s through manufacturing handbags in India or producing soymilk in Cambodia, these organizations help once-broken women discover their full worth in the eyes of Jesus.
Only One Choice: In 2001, the Crawford’s relocated from Southern California to direct the Thailand office of International Justice Mission (IJM) in the lush, mountainous city of Chiang Mai. They were drawn to move to Thailand after a short-term mission trip to Asia. Christa, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was dissatisfied with corporate law and had been providing legal aid at the Union Gospel Mission in Los Angeles. Mark had been pastoring a growing multiethnic church while completing a master’s degree at Fuller Theological Seminary; he was preparing himself to fulfill a call to minister to prostituting women. When the couple began advocating through IJM for underage girls in forced prostitution, they noticed women over 18 who were “voluntarily” prostituting themselves. They lacked other viable options for supporting themselves and their families. Many women told Mark that they chose prostitution, but, he says, “When you ask them what their choices were, they had only one choice.” This is why many refer to them as “prostituted women” – to highlight the forced nature of their work.
Thailand’s neighbor to the north, Myanmar (Burma), has been under a military dictatorship for years, and its people have endured human rights abuses and a breakdown in the national economy. Consequently, an estimated 350,000 people have fled to Thailand, where they are considered illegal immigrants. Some 40,000 of these are women and girls exploited in Thailand’s sex industry, many in Chiang Mai. Lisa Thompson, the Salvation Army’s liaison for the abolition of sexual trafficking, says media attention on sex trafficking has “captured people’s hearts and [their] desire to help those perceived as poor, ‘innocent’ victims – those trapped in brothels, held at gunpoint, or locked in somebody’s basement. “But Christians tend to split prostituting women into two categories: the good prostitutes and the bad prostitutes. The good ones are victims of forced prostitution; the bad women are voluntary prostitutes and whores.”
The problem is that women on street corners appear to be acting freely, Thompson says. But passers-by are blind to the chains that bind woman to prostitution: poverty, a lack of education, early drug use, a parent in prostitution, childhood sexual abuse, and the abusive tactics of traffickers and pimps. In a survey of prostituted women in nine countries including Thailand, the United States, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey, nearly nine out of ten said they longed to escape. The women the Crawford talk to in bars, massage parlors, and karaoke venues prostitute themselves to provide for parents and children. While it’s normal for sons or daughters in Thailand to offer a portion of their income to parents or grandparents, Mark says families of prostituting women often demand 50 to 100 percent of their daughter’s income.”Filial piety is an admirable Asian cultural value that’s been perverted here by dysfunctional families and a changing society,” he says. The need for money leads women into the sex industry. They stay in prostitution because other available unskilled jobs pay significantly less.
Playing to Strengths: Few Christian organizations were reaching these women in Chiang Mai. So in 2003, the Crawfords decided to pioneer their own outreach, Just Food, Inc., representing “Justice and Food.” Western-style cafes are popular among locals, the large expatriate and missionary community, and the city’s 3 million-plus tourists each year. Christa designed a menu full of the California cuisine she craved, and they opened a modest café housed in a bookstore, featuring items like Southwest chicken wraps and tandoori chicken pizza. They trained women – former prostitutes and those at-risk of entering the trade – to make tortillas and gourmet coffee drinks, to serve customers, and to run a kitchen. Despite the café’s enticing menu and décor, some Thai Christians refused to patronize a business tainted by the stigma of prostitution, and many churches have been hesitant to get involved in any way. “By associating with prostitutes, you’re lowering your status,” Mark says. “It’s like working with lepers. Are you going to infect yourself if you’re associating with these people?”
The Crawford did help one Thai church to open a daycare facility for children of prostituted women. In 2004, the Crawford launched a new venture, a combined counseling and vocational training program called Garden of Hope. With Western food still in high demand, Mark and Christa are now raising capital to start a culinary arts academy at their rehabilitation center. The new ministry will reach out to at-risk women, children, and men. In addition to baking and cooking classes, the ministry will offer computer training. The Crawford anticipate that training for legitimate jobs in restaurants and hotels will fit with the women’s gifts. “These women are [already] in the service industry,” says Christa. “We need to redeem their skills.” The Crawford’s’ views on vocational training were shaped by Mark’s years as a training manager for Ritz-Carlton Hotels. “The emphasis was not correcting people’s weaknesses, but playing to their strengths,” he says.
With prostitution, “you’re pretending you want to be with someone you don’t want to be with. You have to present a false image of yourself,” Mark says. The couple believe offering multiple training options will help the women and girls discover how God has gifted them and regain a sense of self. In addition, the women employed at the ministry’s garden café will gain customer service and basic marketing skills. The Crawford aim to link graduates with jobs and apprenticeships at restaurants and four- or five-star hotels, such as the Four Seasons. Christa hopes to someday supply the four local Starbucks with cinnamon rolls, brownies, and muffins. The Crawford also want to turn Just Food, Inc., into a franchise, operating restaurants, bed and breakfasts, and spas where recovering women can gain work skills in supportive environments.
Dr. Lewis Akpogena
08055059656
E-mail: akpogena@yahoo.com
