=================== Preeti Patkar Prerana, Mumbai =================== Prerana: We are based in Mumbai. We started work in1986 with the children of prostitute in Kamatipura. There was a public municipal school in the middle of the redlight area, and in 1986 the school population was 5000 and not even 1% was from the redlight area. We definitely saw that there were lots of children in the redlight area and that's how we started our intervention. When we started moving around, what we really saw was shocking. Every mother thought that when her child grows up the child will be a definite recruit into the flesh trade. We also saw young girls soliciting with the mother, and the clients deciding between going to the mother or the daughter. We saw really young ones being drugged and put off to sleep. And for those who could fend for themselves spent the evening running errands for the mother's customers. When we started this intervention, this was not participatory at all. This was an outsider group who felt that this was necessary. Before starting any kind of services, we felt that unless we understand the mothers' perception about the child, it probably would not be really successful. Towards the end of 1986, we had a focus group with the mothers where we tried to understand theit perception about their children's future. We did not find a single mother who did not feel that her child should have a life other than hers in the redlight area. That was the time when we put forth certain services for the underprivileged children that exists in other areas and asked them what they felt about those services for their own children. Out of those services, we spoke to them about institutionalization, foster care, education, adoption and a crhche. Not a single mother from that focus group said that they wanted to give their children for adoption. All they kept saying was to take away the child from the redlight area because redlight area is not a place where a child will be able to change his/her life. For foster care, they weren't sure whether there would be any families who would take children of prostitutes and if they did whether they would allow the prostitutes to go and visit them. Creche which is a night care center was an innovative idea. They asked where would one get workers for the night because prostitutes are the only ones who work at night. From there began a services. From day one, our focus was on formal education - never on NFE. We did a conduct a few batches of NFE for children who were 7-9 years old, and to put them into mainstream schools, we had to upgrade their educational skills. Today we have an education support program through which all support that the child requires to sustain him/her in formal education environment is given. We also have institutionalization program. Bombay has 28-30 boarding homes for destitute children which is run by NGOs and government agencies. In 1986 there wasn't a single home ready to take these children because they felt that these children and their needs are different. Our idea was to mainstream these children and not further segregate and stigmatize them by having something different. It was big challenge for us to convince these boarding homes. Today we have 600 children placed in different institutional settings - many of them in Bombay and some of them in places like AP, Karnataka and UP. We then started the concept the night care center. That was a challenge because there was nobody who was willing to us place. [One option was the Kamatipura School] The Bombay Municipal Corporation felt that the prostitutes would come to the school premises in the night and that was not good for the other children. Finally they did agree and we started the first night care center. Today we have three centers in three different redlight areas - two in Bombay and one in the outskirts. We have 95 children coming every night to the shelter. The children come in 5:30, stay with us the entire night until the next day morning. Most of them go to the school after having a bath and a breakfast at our night care center. We also have both positive children in these crhches. We look into their overall development - hrealth, education, life skill education - every possible need. We run a child guidance clinic which runs twice a week because what we found that these children had and still have a lot of behavioral problems. [...may have lost a minute or two...] Nobody wanted these children. Everybody wanted children who can stand first or get good percentages. We started a shelter on rental premises for any child from the redlight area - for any girl child who is scholastically behind or borderline mentally challenged. We are also a support organization for Child Line. We have a lot of young girls, sexual exploitation, probable victims of trafficking, runaway girls whom we keep at the night care shelter. There are times we give them 24-hour shelter for more than 15 days. Though are not permitted to keep them for more than 24 hours, there are situations where cannot move them because there is no alternative. This is our work with children of prostitutes in the redlight areas. During this time we also started working with the mothers and women in redlight areas. Today, they have their own collective called Nishant who fight for their own issues. We train them on issues from leadership to legal rights, civic responsibilities, they go on morchas, make their own representations. We have a group of 10 women who act as community animators in their community. If there is any crisis even in the middle of the night, they are there to help other women. Way back in 1998, we started our anti-trafficking work. What we realized is that while we try to address the issue of second generation prostitution, but the first generation kept coming. We were doing work but redlight area kept swelling. There were young girls. In 1986 we saw on the street women of 20-25, in 1998 we saw young girls of 18-20 soliciting. That's the time we felt that we had to address the issue of trafficking. We had our first meeting in Maharashtra. We invited many NGOs. At that time NGOs were of the view that anti-trafficking issues were to be addressed by NGOs working in the redlight areas. Whereas we feel that anti-trafficking issues must be addressed by those not working in the redlight areas because we are basically talking about prevention and social reintegration another big challenge. We felt the need to start a dialogue. That's when a network, perhaps the first in the country, got formed. It was called Network Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking (NACSET). The network started with members working in the redlight areas. Today we have 250 members in the state of Maharashtra. Many of them working on watershed management, child rights issues, farming, womens rights etc. from the rural areas. It is very important for the network because they are working in the source districts from which girls are trafficked. Unless these people do not understand what trafficking is, the redlight area will keep swelling. Our first attempt as a network was to try and get these different organizations in different rural areas to understand the trafficking, migration and the issue of missing children. During our initial work, everybody saw trafficking as migration. They saw mobility but they never imagined that this was trafficking. Then there were some who mistook missing children as trafficking situation. This was a major challenge to talk to different organizations and make them differences between them (trafficking, migration and missing children). From there we have moved onto to working on prevention issues. Our recent addition to the work in this area is we have developed a training manual for those working with adolescent girls - the manual should be ready anytime next month. We recently pretested it with some trainers in state of Maharashtra. It talks about not just the issue of trafficking but the process which an adolescent girl has to go through before you touch upon the topic of trafficking. In a nutshell, you start talking to an adolescent girls about her needs, from needs to rights, rights to gender, gender to more specific rights, from that to sexual exploitation and from that to commercial sexual exploitation. The manual gives tips on how you the entire group [of adolescent girls] through this process. We also facilitate prosecution. We facilitate rescues in the redlight areas. We do a lot of training for police, judges, public prosecutors, CBOs, NGOs etc. In NACSET and as Prerana what we strongly believe is that trafficking is an organized crime and handful of NGOs will never be able to handle the issue. There is urgent need to socialize this issue and try and put on to the agenda of every possible individual/organization. Let there be a lot of participation from the society to address the issue. We have had two PILs. One was on the state of rescue homes in state of Maharashtra. We won the PIL. The second was when 10 girls were rescued from a brothel in the suburbs of Bombay. All the girls were minors. The lawyer came, and in the absence of any guardians, took charge of all these minors which is illegal according to Indian law. The judge's handed over of these girls to a minor in the absence of all parents - which is also illegal. We approached the high court and filed a PIL. We won in that case too. Now we filed a third PIL. Out of the 10 girls who were handed over to this lawyer, all of them were missing. We recently rescued one girl. In her statement she said that the lawyer who appeared for them resold her to the second brothel. We are in the high court because the lower court gave bail to this lawyer which we are opposing, and there is also a section in the PITA (section 18) which asks for the closure of brothels. It has never been used and for the first time we are advocating for the use of that section. There is also a lot of advocacy work that we do. In the PITA, there is a provision for the trafficking officer. We have lobbied to get the CBI appointed as the special trafficking [unit] who could appoint one of their officers for the position. Recently, about 6 months ago, the home ministry has given directives to the CBI. Today if there is a inter-state trafficking case, it can be handed over to the CBI. It need not go to the high court. You as an NGO can also demand that CBI carry out an enquiry because there is a desk at CBI which looks into interstate trafficking issues. We have a regular anti-trafficking release (email) - almost everyday we issue one news item on trafficking issue which could as local as kamatipura, bombay, india or any other part of the world. it reaches 1000 people across the world. We do a lot of documentation. Part of our advocacy is for changes we suggest in the PITA. Child Line is a free helpline for children. For their coordinators we brought out a book which is in the form of an FAQ which talks about what trafficking is - from concept to finer details of trafficking. We also have an Armor (NGO directory). Armor was the outcome of a meeting at Bangalore. Many of you were present at that meeting. That was the first interstate meeting that NACSET had organized. The outcome was that everybody felt that they needed a directory so that in the process of rescue, rehab and home study one can have easy contact to facilitate that kind of work. For every trafficking victim, a home study report has to be submitted. Very surprisingly none of out Acts and rules/regulations has any guidelines on how the homestudy reports has to be conducted. We recently drafted guidelines for such homestudy work. Many of you have received the guidelines for comments and many of you did send the comments. We are in the stage of finalizing the comments and doing some lobbying to make them the government guidelines. Sridhar: ..your comment earlier about not reporting the sexual abuse cases. You mentioned that there was debate some 5 years back. What is your opinion now? Preeti: Our experience has been that NGOs are still not sure whether they should or should not. As far as Prerana is concerned, when a child comes to us who is a victim of sexual exploitation which need not necessarily be rape we do report it to the police. We follow it up with the prosecution. We are clear. A child who is not prepared today and does not want to relive the entire the exploitative situation, if you put the child through a process of counseling the child opens up, talks and at some point is fully with you. Anita: Are there cases where even after counseling they dont want to go through it? Do you push them in such cases? Preeti: Very surprisingly we have not had such cases. Let me also confess that in cases where the girl was raped now and we got to know that, we let the child not go through the process of counseling because the evidence gets lost. You immediately put the child through counseling. There have been cases where we have not had that much time and we have taken the child for filing an FIR. Indrani: What happens if the abuser is a clos relative of the victim? Preeti: In a recent case with Vimochana, we had one child - we got to know only when it was quite late, the child was four months pregnant by then. We followed up the case. The person who was witness to this crime was the aunt and just 10 days ago the child was taken for identification to her village. My colleagues accompanied her to Karnataka. The rapist as well as the aunt were arrested. Indrani: What kind of punishments would they face? What exists in the system? Preeti: 7 years rigorous imprisonment is the best we have got. Anjali: Do you think that is right? Preeti: I do not think 7 years is good enough. Anjali: Are there NGOs working towards that? Preeti: There is an attempt happening through several networks to bring about a legistation on child [rights]. Other than IPC and Unnatural Offence we have no section on child sexual exploitation. The entire legistation is currently with law commission and it will be tabled any time now. There is an entire law that has been drafted by several groups with one group in Delhi taking up major role because of one particular case in which a child was abused by her own father who was deputy secretary in the home ministry. Hansa: When it is incest, do they feel guilt in having their parent or close relative jailed or punished in any way? Preeti: Yes. In every possible case of child sexual exploitation, they [the children] need counseling. Initially when we started off we felt that a counsellor was good enough. Today we feel that in case of child sexual exploitation and other problem, counselor is not good enough. We definitely need a clinical psychologist because a lot of therapy is required before the child comes back to the normal stage. The child goes through guilt, rejection and worst we always separate the child. In case of the incest, instead of getting the perpetrator out of the sight, we are always moving a victim giving the child a message that the child has done something wrong and therefore you are the one wrong where he [the perpetrator] will continue staying in the secure environment. Hansa: There is nothing we can do about that. Preeti: Unfortunately we cannot do anything about that. In a family situation, even in the redlight areas. The clients has attempted rape and the first thing we have done is move the child rather than the child not visiting the brothel again. We know that it is next to impossible. Hansa: Would a brothel keeper be willing to atleast discuss this? Preeti: No way. Anita: You said you started working with the mothers and then women in the redlight areas. When you say women, are you referring to women in the trade or someone else? Preeti: We are to a great extent a single issue based organization. If at all we do, it is because of the prevention work. Otherwise it is just the redlight area. When we say mother and women, we make distinction between them and thats how we moved. What we realized every lady who came to our center as so-and-so's mother. All our dialogue was about the child and with her because of her relationship as a mother. Thats when we realized that there are many women whose names we did not even know. Then we realized that she is something more than a mother and a prostitute. She is a woman with her independent rights which have nothing to do with her being a mother or a prostitute. Thats how we started this women's empowerment program. Anita: How is Prerana's relationship with the local police? Preeti: It is always good/not good. This is our recent funding: what we have found is that when you facilitate a rescue process, if the brothel keeper is new in the area and the connections with the police are not strong, the police is very enthusiastic and very willing to please the NGO. The minute you try and touch a brothel keeper who has been there for the last 16-17 years, you have just seen the minor and by the time you have gone to the police station and come back which takes about 1/2 hour, the minor is not there. We have worked a lot on children of prostitutes. This is what is happening: even if we take a child of a prostitute, they read that there is a problem and are willing to help. Even in the public hospitals they are willing to help when it comes to a child. There is absolutely no discrimination when it comes to a child but there is discrimination when it comes to a woman. Ajeet: The children you have put in school, the eldest one is of what age? Preeti: This year we had 18 children who appeared for 10th and 12th board exams, 17 passed, highest scored 75%, and our oldest is in final year graduation. Ajeet: Is there a problem with the brothel keeper? Preeti: We have lost [in the past]. We are almost losing out one child who became the orphan. The child was put up in a hostel. We told them that the lady who is trying to befriend this child is the mother's brothel keeper. None the less, this summer vacation, the child was allowed to go to Delhi and it is her [the child's] 10th standard. The girl has called us up and said that she is not going to coming back. She left her telephone number and our network is trying. By the time the children are 14-16, every brothel keeper is interested. Especially these days with so many children becoming orphans due to HIV/AIDS, the brothel keeper are even more eager to come forward to befriend these children. Dr. Subbaramaih: Whats the duration of sex workers in the redlight area? How long do they stay? The children are studying upto 7-8th standard. I think in the redlight area only young girls upto the age of 18-20 are doing commercial sex work. Preeti: These are some myths about prostitutes. One is we have only young prostitutes. We have prostitutes upto 55-60 if a customer is willing. They solicit on the streets because they have no option. [In] This entire issue of rehabilitation, we put the onus on the woman. We have put the arrow facing the civil society because so long as civil society is not going to be ready to reintegrate the women, rehabiliation is going to be a challenge. I wanted to comment on the marriage issue. Marriage in the bombay redlight area is a big farce. they get married to the pimps and the dalals, and the next day the pimp sells her off to yet another brothel.