When COVID hit the world it presented a big challenge for us as we were ready to move some girls at risk into our new facility, a safe house that we had just completed building. The  country did not have COVID cases and did not even have a large COVID infected population  and after three years still no pandemic. We only had a few isolated cases in remote locations from those  returning from countries that had a pandemic. The local government was very vigilant at making sure we did not have a pandemic. Neighbors were not allowed to visit and yellow police tape was strung  across entrances of the few homes that had an infected person.. So we had to postpone our moving in day. We are trying to regroup now and rebuild our work. Please help us to do this by donating. Thank you very much.

We have not posted for quite a while, however, that doesn't mean we are not continuing in the fight against this horror ruining the lives of many youths. Recently we have seen the rise in trafficking of disabled boys. That is a major concern nowadays as well. We hope to build a youth hostel for disabled boys in SE Asia. Disabilities are a burden on any family but more so for poverty-stricken ones. They are more prone to let their boys be taken. It is a travesty!   The damage they suffer from this abuse makes them even more disabled. Now emotionally crippled as well! If given an education and a skill many of these boys can make a decent living for themselves.

INCREASE IN SLAVERY

In the 8th century there were 12.5 million slaves. Today there are 30 million! There are 800,000 sold each year and 80% of those are females. Sixty thousand in the USA alone. Sweden prosecutes brothel owners and customers. Why are the other countries so slow in eradicating his travesty???

IN USA HIDDEN SLAVERY VICTIMS LOOK LIKE ORDINARY PEOPLE 

In the USA laws exist to protect and provide services for victims.  Men ,women and children of all ages and races are vulnerable to hidden slavery. It does not discriminate. Victims can be US citizens or from other countries.

In the USA, a victim could be exploited to beg for money, smuggle drugs, domestic servitude, manual labor and commercial sex acts.

What are the signs?

• Someone who has been mutilated, branded or tattooed
• No personal ID or documents
• Is escorted everywhere they go
• Lives where they work or with the group they work with
• Has no access to their earnings or cash
• Appears malnourished or hungry
• Children engaging in work activities not suitable for their age

Where does  hidden slavery occur?

• Restaurants
• Farms
• Private homes
• Hotels
• Construction sites
• Factories and sweatshops
• Nail salons
• Adult clubs
• Brothels
• Massage Parlors
• Pornography
• Street prostitution

The above information is provided by the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance  For more information or to report a tip :  Call: 1-888-3737-888 and or for Emergency call 911.

New Film: SOLD opens this week in New York

The movie SOLD is about an impoverished Nepali girl  sold by her parents into sex slavery.  The film stars Gillian Anderson who plays a photographer who joins forces with an activist attempting to rescue enslaved women and children.  Jillian has been involved in a number of charities and sex trafficking is now one of her causes. Anderson says the film is a very difficult movie with a difficult subject matter, that of enslaved children.

Thousands Urge Help for Indian Sisters "Ordered Raped".

The above is the title of an article that came out in Agence France- Pressed August 30th.

Thousands signed petitions after  local council ordered sisters raped and paraded naked as punishment for their brother eloping with a married woman. This family of a "Dalit" caste considered "untouchable" was forced into hiding after their brother eloped with a woman from a dominant caste. The sisters 15yrs and 23 yrs  have been in hiding. These village councils are highly influential and have sanctioned "honor killings" and other atrocities.  One of the sisters filed a petition and awaits the verdict from a Supreme Court in Uttar Pradesh.

In other news in Nepal the Central Investigation Bureau says they plan to file a case against two traffickers who allegedly ferried 27 Nepali women to India last summer. Maiti Nepal is seeking maximum compensation to victims of trafficking in Nepal.

It has been over three months since the Himalayan Mt. earthquake,  affecting several countries...India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bhutan.  It may appear that life is back to normal in the absence of news and media reports...but far from it.  On site stories paint a much different scenario for many young women.  Keep checking on our blog to learn more....

Himalayan Mt Earthquake Increases Risk of Girl Trafficking

Due to the earthquake tragedy in the Himalayan Mts. girls are now at a very high risk of being trafficked across the borders from villages  where family members are injured, missing or dead. Purveyors come seeking vulnerable families  to prey upon during this time of crisis. Please help us to help these families!

People all over the region are spending their nights sleeping outside, in fear of aftershocks. In the capitol of Kathmandu and in remote villages, many are still living outside due to severe damage or total destruction of their homes.

The capitol city of Kathmandu and suburbs reported the most deaths at 1500, and those injured numbered close to 3000. Total deaths throughout the country are now reported as 5300 and injured as 10,500. Small villages were affected drastically as many are without food, water, shelter and electricity. There is difficulty in reaching the injured in these remote villages.

According to the Kathmandu Post (April 26,2015) most villages suffered many casualties, especially in the eastern part of Nepal, near the Indian border. Specialized search and rescue teams have arrived from other countries and are attempting to reach casualties in these remote areas.

Some Cultures Passive About Violence Against Women

A recent World Bank Report says," A culture that is passive towards "Violence Against Women" will not flourish".

Many countries in the Himalayan Mts. reflect those research findings.  This last winter in India there was mass sterilizations of women, of whom many died and others became deathly ill. The doctor performing the procedure on hundreds of women at the rate of 83 per hour supposedly used the same uncleaned  unsanitized instruments on all of them!

On the same day in a capitol Himalayan Mt city that  a march took place, for stopping violence  against women,  a female police officer was murdered.(Himalayan Times Dec.11,2014)

"Despite political rhetoric, of women's empowerment the state of Nepali women remain bleak. " KTM Post Editorial by Suresh Pranjali

TRAFFICKER GETS 25 YEARS

Today's Kathmandu Post reported that a trafficker received a sentence of 25 years for trafficking girls across the Nepal border into Tibet. "Maiti Nepal" a non profit organization specializing in locating girls, rescuing and prosecuting had rescued thirty some girls who had been trafficked in this manner.

Kin Trafficking Girls on the Rise Governments Must Intervene

Recently we learned of more and more incidents where relatives were trafficking girls as young as ten years of age. This presents many problems as they do not allow the girls to be adopted or put in a children's home although they are newly orphaned and  relatives aren't  willing to support them. The trafficking relatives over rule the relatives who do desire to place them in children's homes or with a permanent guardian. A Himalayan Mountain newspaper group reported an alarming increase in this activity within families! (Feb 21, 2014 Nuwakot). Unfortunately many times the police are of no help whatsoever even in cases where young girls are being gang raped by relatives and neighbors and are at high risk of being trafficked. The female officers must submit to the higher ranking male officers so their work is very stressful as they cannot take action without superior's approval and direction. So they must shamefully look the other way.

It has been awhile since we have posted anything as we have been extremely busy with feeding street girls and working with governments to try to provide housing and care for girls as young as five years of age. Sometimes laws passed to assist children actually make it more difficult to help those in crisis and rescue them to a safe house!We hope to have some new exciting news to post soon. So keep checking back!

The Cries of Himalayan Mt Girls

More than 1 million children are trafficked throughout the world each year, and 43 percent are forced into sexual slavery.The biggest difference between prostitution and sex slavery is this: A runaway may survive by prostituting herself on the streets of NYC to escape domestic violence and sexual abuse at home. In Nepal and India girls are physically forced into a building and cannot escape, because they have been literally sold into slavery and forced into this way of life. We have also seen others  abandoned on the streets as young as five years of age only to be picked up by traffickers for slavery simply because girls are in demand. Every day our hearts ache for these girls and we desire to do more!

We are building safe houses for those young girls abandoned to the streets. You can help us by joining our current housing campaign. Go to :  www.youcaring.com/thecriesofhimalayangirls This one ends December 31st, 2013. We actually have not reached our goals so we are continuing the campaign another six months. Thank you so much to those of you who contributed to this campaign!

Nepali Girls Trafficked as Far as Kenya and Tanzania

According to a Nepali Times article September 11,2013 Nepali girls are being taken as far away as Kenya and Tanzania. Once tricked to travel for good jobs they end up being used in bars and clubs etc. It is imperative that teenage girls are assisted in meeting their basic needs so they do not feel compelled to take jobs in far away places putting themselves at risk of being prostituted..

Four Nepali Girls Rescued

Four girls from Nepal were rescued and a woman was arrested,. a senior official said today. The girls were being taken to Sonauli bus station when the SSB, acting on a tip off, reached the spot and rescued them and arrested the woman along with them, said a commander.. During interrogation, the arrested woman revealed that she was supposed to hand over the girls to her accomplice in Mumbai after taking Rs 10,000 for each. The girls have been sent back to Nepal.
Business Standard September 26, 2013

Re-trafficking is Happening! 
A young girl who has been rescued 3 times from a red-light area in India, was  taken by the Child Welfare Committee (CWC). They transferred her to a shelter home run by an organization in another city working to protect the rights of marginalised children and women.We thank God that the CWC has ordered that she not be released for one year to anyone claiming custody as  multiple people have tried to get custody of her by claiming to be her parents. Also, if she had been released to her home state there is a strong probability that she would have been re-trafficked.

Child Protection Act Due to High Rate of Crimes Against Children in India
Delhi with 3,635 cases  topped the list of cities where highest number of crime against children was committed in 2012 as per NCRB records. The total crimes committed against children in 2011 was 5,500. The Child Protection Act was recently instituted and started being enforced more..The Act  provides for punishments, ranging from simple to rigorous imprisonment of varying periods, graded as per the gravity of the offence. There is also a provision for fine. The cops have been briefed about the Child Protection Act and asked to be sensitive towards offenses related to children. Sharing his views with TOI, head of the department of Sociology, Allahabad University, Prof A Satyanarayana said, it is the outcome of access to the western mass media in which pornography is easily available and  sows the seed of sick mentality towards others especially the fairer sex. Social values have degraded over the years, he added. A weak legal system is yet another lacuna which adds to the menace, said Prof Narayana. Commenting on the issue, an expert from the Centre of Behavioral and Cognitive Science (CBCS) of AU, Dr Bhoomika R Kar, who has done extensive research on the problems faced by kids, opines that it is not that there is a sudden increase in crime against children but the reality is that such cases are being reported more now as people are coming out and speaking about it. Children have always been a soft target both because at times they are not much aware of the fact that what is happening to them is wrong. If at all they are aware of it, then they are scared to speak about it, said the expert. Right from early childhood, kids should be taught about the sensitive issues and the lawmakers too should enact and follow strict laws to curb this menace and keep the kids safe, she added. The genesis of the problem lies in sick minds that some people grow up to have, said Dr Kar. Source:  The Times of India (published on 13 July, 2013) .

Southeast Asia- US Connection

Washington: An Indian has been sentenced to three years in prison for trafficking women from India into the United States.
Kaushik Jayantibhai Thakkar, 33, along with Brazilian national Fabiano Augusto Amorim, was sentenced  to three years in prison for their roles in smuggling undocumented migrants to the US for private financial gain, the acting assistant US attorney general Mythili Raman said.  Thakkar and Amorim were also sentenced to serve two years of supervised release, as per the order of the US District Judge Ewing Werlein in the southern district of Texas. On December 2, 2012, and January 4, 2013,  Thakkar and Amorim pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to bring undocumented migrants into the US for profit and to one count of unlawfully bringing two undocumented migrants into the United States for profit.	Using a network they transported groups of undocumented migrants from locations within India through South America, Central America and the Caribbean and then into the US by various means, including by air travel, automobiles, water craft and foot, the justice department said. Many of these smuggling events involved illegal entry into the US via the border between the United States and Mexico near McAllen and Laredo, Texas, it added. Source:  The Times of India  (published on 18 May, 2013)

Release of the 2013 TIP (Trafficking in Persons) Report

The U.S. State Dept. has just released the 2013 TIP, Trafficking in Persons Report. You can view it on their website. It is an easy read by country and in the US by state.