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Anna Maria, 15, is recovering at the Preda Center. She goes to
school and loves to learn. She travels to school with 35 other
children who are also recovering and overcoming the trauma of abuse.
Given care, affirmation support and good therapy, victims are not
damaged forever. They can recover and make a success of life. That
is the goal of the Childhood for Children Life Recovery Programme.
There are 53 children recovering in Preda at present, not all are
ready for school.
Arriving from school on the Preda bus, they are laughing, boisterous
and full of life, simply happy. They have a meeting on their return
to Preda and tell about their experience at school. The staff
members listen and help them deal with any school problem. It is so
important to listen to children.
After the meeting and story-telling, they all go
wash up and have a shower and change clothes. They come together for
a meal. A buzz of noisy conversation and chatting fills the room.
Some of the girls are assigned to wash the dishes, others clean the
dining room and sweep the floor. The Preda social worker helps and
encourages them, teaching by example. Others are allowed to watch a
serial story on TV for 40 minutes. Only positive inspirational and
education programs are viewed.
Then it’s time for homework. Some of the
children work on the computers. A teacher arrives in the study hall
and Anna Maria is always eager to do the home work. The children
know that education is the only way out of the pit of poverty.
After doing their homework, the children have evening prayer and a
reading from the Gospel. Through the Gospel, the children learn that
every individual is important, precious and valuable, and has rights
as a member of the family of God, as a human person and especially
as a child.
It is not only the group that is important, but
each individual. Taken for granted today, it was a revolutionary
idea 2000 years ago. An individual can never be sacrificed for the
sake of group or family interest.
This is a typical day in the life of Anna Maria.
She is happy and laughing and doing well in school. But when she
first came to Preda, she was depressed, suicidal and filled with
fear and anxiety. She was alone and lost, far from her parents and
home. She was a victim of forced child prostitution.
It all began when she was taken out of school at
14 by her impoverished parents to work as a domestic helper in the
city to send money home. They did not know that the owner, Dom
Pedro, was a member of the political elite and a wealthy sex club
owner. She washed and cleaned in his sumptuous private mansion. Anna
Maria never received any payment and was not allowed to leave the
compound. There was no escape.
One night, Anna Maria was set upon by the
20-year-old son of her employer. A week later she was taken out to
his friends and they abused her, too.
Soon after she was brought to the sex club and
made to work serving drinks. A foreign sex tourist fancied her, paid
the manager and dragged her to a back room where she was sexually
abused again and again. She was traumatized, shocked and crying. In
desperation, she climbed out a toilet window and ran away. A
good-hearted woman vendor in the market heard her story and
immediately sent a text message to Preda. She was a member of the
“defenders of children,” a group trained by the Preda Community
Education Team to report child abuse.
Within 20 minutes, the Preda child rescue team
van arrived and Anna Maria was saved. She is now a strong-minded
young lady and empowered to testify against her abuser.
It is only a government that is corruption-free
and cares for the dignity of women and children that will close the
sex industry and stop supporting it. They can do it, with political
will, and by canceling the operating licenses and permits.
That will save thousands of children like Anna Maria. It can’t
come soon enough.
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