Yeah, its true.
It costs 80 baht, almost $3 for a coke that I have to buy just to talk to a "bar girl". If I dont buy another in about 20 minutes the manager who is watching us, already annoyed that I bought the cheapest drink on the menu, will ask me to leave.
They know who we are and they know what we do.
We are those strange "tourists" that dont come for sex & don't come to get drunk. We talk to the women a few nights a week to empower them to leave the bar scene and sex trade.
If a woman we meet speaks decent English and if she is willing to risk not being able to send money home to her parents or children and if she can believe there is something better for her she might meet us for lunch to talk about her options. Thats where SHE comes in!
SHE is a ministry aimed at empowering women to leave prostitution. Women have the option of leaving the bars, moving in at SHE for free, taking a 3 month course in various areas of business and upon completion being placed with a job.
So why dont they all leave? Because after being treated like and object designed solely for the service of others it can be hard to believe that they are worth or can accomplish anything. Most of the women we talked to felt stuck. One was overseen by her brother who was there to make sure she was working. Every woman I spoke to was sent by her parents to earn and send money back to her family or to provide for her children living with other relatives.
"I do everything but I dont like."
Can you imagine if your job was to be used like a toilet by countless strangers? Enduring it day in and day out with no forseeable end? That is what people in the sex trade live everyday.
Hope (not her real name) is a young woman we had the privilege of meeting for lunch. She opened up to us, new friends who surprisingly just wanted to get to know her, and told us about her line of work. Throughout our conversation she was called by a client and continuously she made excuses to stay in our gentle company a little longer. "His penis kaput. No work. We not have sex, just watch Grace have sex with friends" She pointed to her friend sitting with us. This is just one women and one client. Almost all women we spoke to had one to a few regular clients and multipule one-timers. We were told our work in Thailand was the tip of an iceberg. The people we met though under extreme pressure did have a choice to leave their jobs. There are so many more who don't have that choice.
"There is a high demand for 2-7 year olds for the sex trade."
This was told to us by a friend of the chief of police when he was warning us about certain areas we were working in. For our own safety a number of bars were off limits because the people behind closed doors were in fact trafficked. Because Phuket is world-renown for sex-tourism people come from all over expecting to indulge in any type of desire they may have. This is a reality for more people than we know, men, women and children. The one street we worked on, about 3 blocks had over 1200 women stuck in prostitution,
This was told to us by a friend of the chief of police when he was warning us about certain areas we were working in. For our own safety a number of bars were off limits because the people behind closed doors were in fact trafficked. Because Phuket is world-renown for sex-tourism people come from all over expecting to indulge in any type of desire they may have. This is a reality for more people than we know, men, women and children. The one street we worked on, about 3 blocks had over 1200 women stuck in prostitution,
But thank God there is hope. People like our ministry contact who have dedicated their lives to helping this taboo population.
Please consider finding a ministry or organization of your choice and supporting them in the fight against human trafficking. If you would like to help SHE or have any questions email me at [email protected]
Photos of our ministry were taken by Mac Mitchell.
