Italian convents serving as safe houses for sex-trafficking victims.

[pnwmom]

http://globalsistersreport.org/news/trafficking/italian-convents-act-safe-houses-trafficking-portal-17806


“Even women – young women, children – have become commodities,” Sr. Eugenia Bonetti said. “We speak a lot about ‘globalization,’ but we are revising even the market for human beings.” As the director of the Counter Trafficking Office at Union of Italian Major Superiors (USMI), Bonetti, a Consolata Missionary sister, coordinates the efforts of 250 sisters who work in 100 convent-safe houses across Italy.

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Elizabeth, for instance, grew up in a family with four younger brothers. Her family couldn’t afford to educate her, so when she was 13, her mother gave, or perhaps sold, her to a hairdresser. While working as a servant for the woman, she met a man who said he would help her. He’d pay for her to go to Italy, and she could pay him back when she got there.

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Casa Rut consists of an apartment where four Ursuline sisters live, plus an attached unit with four rooms for the women and their children. They live, eat and pray together as a family, and they try to keep the number of women small.

Elizabeth arrived at Casa Rut on Aug. 12, days after her 18th birthday, and within a month, the sisters had worked with the Nigerian embassy and Italian government to secure her permit to stay in the country. Soon, she would start language classes and vocational training to prepare her to integrate into Italian society.

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