I understand that following journalist Ivan Broadhead's visit to Nepal a couple of weeks' ago a feature about cross border trafficking was due to appear in today's South China Morning Post (Hong Kong's largest English daily). I gather that it was expected to be cover story in the Sunday magazine which, if this is the case, would echo what happened almost seven years ago when the Trust's work received identical coverage. At that time it gave us a dream start as a charity for the story moved sideways, being syndicated to the UK's largest broadsheet, the Daily Telegraph, where it became cover story in the weekend section (see the link below "My Interview with the Daily Telegraph"). The mailbag after that was published was phenomenal and many of those who wrote to me at that time are still with us today as loyal supporters.
I am hoping to be given permission to publish today's article as a transcript on our website as it is powerfully written. The story opens with Ivan recounting the experience of one young man who went to India as a teenager to end up tricked into the Bombay sex trade. Before he managed to escape he was sodomised by an estimated 30,000 men. Stories of such violence are not unusual in our beneficiaries either. Nor is the final insult - rejection upon return home. When this young man finally made it back to Nepal he was beaten up by his brothers for bringing shame onto the family. Circus returnees can also expect at best little sympathy from friends and family.
I am reminded of how Esther told me that when she was a social worker her Dutch Jewish clients would tell how upon returning from the concentration camps would be greeted by their neighbours with comments like "I thought Hitler had finished you off".
