Prevent Child Trafficking Through Education

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your continued support of The Freedom Story. We wanted to give a quick update on one of our scholarship students and show how mentorship alleviates risk. 

Tarrin,* a bold and funny 17 year old with an endearing smile, makes friends easily. He cheekily calls himself stubborn, “but in the way kids generally are.” His easy demeanor, however, belies a difficult childhood marred by addiction, poverty, and abuse.

The Impact of His Father’s Addiction

Born and raised in rural Chiang Rai, Tarrin’s mother left him when he was a baby. He has only seen her twice since. From when he was a toddler, it was his grandmother who raised him. To say that his father has struggled with addiction would be to put it mildly. The only time Tarrin and his grandmother ever saw him was when he wanted money. “He’d come when he ran out of money for alcohol, and if she didn’t give him any, because there wasn’t really any, he’d steal whatever she had. He would beat her as well. He was drunk every time he came to visit. If he wasn’t drunk, he didn’t come.”

Tarrin’s grandmother provided stability. “My grandmother was the loudest in the village,” he says, “so if I came home late, everyone would know. Everyone would say, ‘Hey, hurry up your grandma is calling you to go home.’”

But when Tarrin was seven, his grandmother got cancer and they needed someone to care for them both. They moved in with his father and stepmother in the city. But this wasn’t much of a reprieve. His stepmother also struggles with substance abuse, and her arguments with his father often turned violent. Their problems with addiction compounded problems with income, exacerbating the instability.

“I felt lonely, I had nothing to do at home. I had to change schools and I struggled to make friends. I would fight a lot with the kids at the new school,” Tarrin explains. “I would run away and try to get back to my grandma’s house in the village. I was a little kid but I still tried to run away. But my dad always found me.”

Seeing that he was lonely, Tarrin’s sister took him to a computer gaming shop, and introduced him to gaming. He loved getting immersed in the games and quickly became addicted, but the costs led to fights with his father. “My dad would have to come and get me and bring me home. When I got home, my dad would hit me. I would cry every day. He hit me and I cried every day for two years. Then I stopped playing games.”

As he got older, Tarrin’s family began pressuring him to leave school, saying that middle school would be enough education. He persisted, and got part-time work after school to help pay for his education. He worked in the water bottling shop at school, earning $15 a month. When he was 13, he worked at a restaurant during summer break, earning $1.60 per day plus tips.

Joining The Freedom Story

The family’s problems with addiction, the unstable income, the abuse he suffered, and his loneliness aren’t just challenges, they put him at risk of being trafficked or exploited by an abuser preying on these vulnerabilities. Tarrin joined The Freedom Story’s scholarship program last year to help keep him in school. The scholarship makes it possible to focus on his education, and it comes at a critical juncture now that he’s finishing his junior year of high school.

Being a part of our program also gives our staff mentors the opportunity to support him emotionally through this turbulent time. It’s no surprise that with this family history, Tarrin doesn’t feel that he can talk to his family about his problems. “When I’m home, we don’t really talk, sometimes we only talk to each other when we eat dinner,” he says. However, in 2019 he and his father joined our family camp. Tarrin says it was a huge help to his relationship with his dad. “It made me feel closer to my dad, and I felt really loved and connected to him.”

Having a staff mentor who visits him at home and at school and is a place where he can seek advice is also a huge source of support. Tarrin says, “To be able to talk to adults who have experiences, who have success, and more capacity, knowledge, they are a great source of information for us to talk to. They help us [scholarship students] develop faster than our other friends. Much faster.”

This support has opened his mind to new possibilities for his future. “I want to have my own farm,” he says, “But not just for planting and growing things. I want it to be a learning center for those in the community to learn about new types of agriculture and farming.” Tarrin has his sights on studying in Chiang Mai, a bigger city with a well-known university for agriculture, so he can pursue this dream.

Tarrin’s unstable and violent childhood, his family’s lack of reliable income, and his isolation all put him at risk of dropping out of school and becoming trafficked. But his optimism and determination set him on a path to achieving his dream of opening a learning center. With your help, we can provide the support he needs to keep him on that path and make his dream a reality.

Thank you for your support of families like Tarrin's. Together, we can break the cycle of trafficking!

In Hope,

The Freedom Story

Links:

• http://thefreedomstory.org

Dear Friends,

The things that put children and young people at risk of trafficking don’t usually happen overnight; they’re vulnerabilities that start early, which is why we advocate for deep change–working overtime to reduce vulnerabilities and build up resilience to prevent trafficking. We have a system for identifying who is most vulnerable, relying on key factors from a person’s history that is recognized as red flags. To illustrate how this works, let’s look at the case of Chayu.

Fourteen-year-old Chayu* is a shy girl with a sweet smile, timid yet articulate. However, her family history has a lot of red flags.

The Red Flags

The first red flag was her parents’ separation, and how she has spent the last few years bouncing back and forth between her mother and father’s houses. That alone would not necessarily be a cause for concern, of course, but after her parents separated, her mother’s income was unstable. She took on work as a housekeeper, but it was insufficient, so she began supplementing that income with sex work in Chiang Rai. She’s not the only one in the family to do so. Chayu’s paternal grandmother also worked in the sex trade in Malaysia, a hotspot for trafficking.

Although we make a distinction between consensual sex work (which is voluntary) and sex trafficking, it raises a concern that Chayu might be more prone to following this path, even while underage. This can happen if her family encourages her to do it to support them financially, or if she takes it on herself–either way, as a minor, this would be considered trafficking. As it is, her mother sometimes takes Chayu with her when she goes out drinking at night. Though Chayu only drinks a soda on these occasions, The Freedom Story staff mentors believe there is a high risk of “learning by seeing,” and that being around that environment would normalize sex work in a way that is inappropriate for someone so young.

Another red flag came in the form of Chayu’s mother’s new partner, who was in his late twenties and much younger than she. The Freedom Story staff believed that living with her mother and her partner in a one-room apartment wasn’t appropriate, especially because in this area there is a high rate of sexual abuse by stepparents. Her stepfather also had a lot of debt, paying off the car he needs for his job. Burdensome debts are a frequently-cited reason people turn to trafficking: it’s the promise of a lot of money earned quickly. Meanwhile, Chayu was often left alone with him while her mother works at night. This situation left a lot of opportunities for abuse.

Chayu’s staff mentor shared that both Chayu and her mom felt uncomfortable with the situation and Chayu wanted to be able to move out. “They were sharing one bed and she felt really uncomfortable, especially because they are so close in age. So she asked to move to live with her dad.”

At her father’s home, Chayu also experienced a lot of stress. She was often required to take care of her 1-year-old half-sister after school, which distracted her from the focus she needed to place on her school work. Her relationship with her stepmother was also fraught, and the two often wouldn’t speak for days on end. Stressful relationships at home also facilitate the risk of trafficking, primarily if there is no safe place to turn to in time of need.

How TFS Is Stepping In

Seeing all these red flags–the low income, the family debt, her family history of sex work, being left alone a lot with her stepfather, and strained family relationships–The Freedom Story’s staff believed Chayu was at risk of trafficking. So she was accepted into The Freedom Story’s scholarship program last year, which helps alleviate the financial strain. TFS staff acted immediately to move Chayu to live with her father full time, to reduce the potential for abuse. Due to COVID restrictions, her grandmother is back from Malaysia, which also helps relieve the burden of carrying for her younger sibling. Our staff also helped facilitate a mutually agreeable system where her parents work together to ensure she is cared for and has transportation to and from school.

She is a dedicated student, working hard and thriving, even through the stress and disruption of a move to a new school. She will finish middle school soon, and though she’s not sure yet what she’ll want to focus on, she’s looking forward to choosing her new subjects for high school. Our task is to continue supporting her financially through her education and providing emotional support to buoy her through challenges at home. We offer awareness-raising programs that might also help her to recognize situations in which she might be vulnerable to abuse so that she can learn to avoid them or get help if they do arise. Together, these resources can keep her more safe and protected.

Thank you for partnering with The Freedom Story in preventing child trafficking in Northern Thailand. There are a lot of vulnerable young girls like Chayu that we work with and together, we can reduce their risk of trafficking. 

With Hope,

The Freedom Story

*Name changed to protect the privacy and identity of the student.