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Monday, November 17, 2003
Editorial: Second chances
How does one put back a broken person?
Sr. Conchita Cueno believes only two things can make the broken whole again.
First, the person must desire to be healed.
One of the pioneering founders and currently the director of the Balay Isidora Foundation, Cueno has worked for years with underage girls lured from the provinces to work in Cebu's flesh trade.
Named after a Spanish missionary of the Oblate of the Most Holy Redeemer, who desired on her deathbed to set up a home for prostituted women, the foundation is sanctuary to 46 women and children. It is operated by the Villa Maria Good Shepherd Sisters Inc., and funded by Karl Kubel Stiftung Germany.
(Cueno requested withholding information about their location for security reasons; five of their clients are involved in pending court cases on child trafficking and white slavery.)
Cueno and Isidora outreach staff and volunteers work the streets day and night just to be there when someone desires to break out. In the streets, parks, bars and outside downtown movie houses and motels, the Isidora network trawls as diligently as the pimps and customers eyeing the girls, many of whom are still in their teens. They come from Siquijor, Butuan, Ormoc and other provinces in Mindanao, recruited by promises of work.
But upon reaching Cebu, it is not to households, restaurants or department stores that these girls are brought to. If a virgin, she is sold from P1,500 to P5,000 in high-end casas. The "less valuable" ones are brought to Kamagayan where P500 is the fee greasing a recruiter for every new girl. Cueno says that "hardcore" girls catch on quickly and go back to their hometowns to recruit townmates. It is not unheard of for a worker to show up in Kamagayan with a "catch" of 15 recruits.
Disintegration
The disintegration of these workers can be gauged by the harm they inflict on others and themselves. Initiated to the profession usually by being raped, the girls subsist on a cocktail of drugs to give them resistance and apathy to take on an average of 7-10 customers per shift. While there are some who dream of having a house or other acquisitions, the majority are in it for the easy money to support their drug vice.
Cueno says this also includes those who turn to the profession because they were abused as children, come from broken families, were influenced by barkadas, or were fleeing other personal problems.
Yet, despite the depths that they have fallen into, there is in some a desire to get out. Across the Kamagayan red-light district is Belen sa Cebu, a drop-in or temporary shelter for those who walk off the streets. Cueno says that a girl who has only been in the flesh trade for a week or so is recommended immediately for rehabilitation at Balay Isidora.
However, the "hardcore" ones who have spent years in the trade are simply given shelter at Belen without any conditions. "Masterminds of all possible vices," some of them just need to sleep off their drug haze. Not a few have as casually walked out of the shelter, their desire for renewal drowned by a greater thirst for old friends, easy money and drugs.
Plan for life
Although they do not pressure these walk-in clients, Belen social workers are there when the girls look for someone to listen to their problems. Some of them move on to discuss a "plan for life." The clients then begin their rehabilitation, an uncertain process that can stretch for two years or be suddenly cut short when the client backslides and runs away.
At Balay Isidora, the women and their children (some bar managers often refer to them their pregnant workers) can avail of non-formal education, as well as formal education in public and private institutions. Cueno hopes to see more government livelihood programs as these serve as deterrents for prostitution, as well as being alternatives for those desiring to leave the flesh trade.
But more than counseling and training, Balay Isidora's chief value lies in its unconditional acceptance of the women. Cueno was recently requested to be the mother giving away a former client in marriage. The Ormoc native had been "hardcore" for five years. When her husband-to-be asked Cueno for the girl's hand in marriage, he brought his family from Cagayan. They knew about her past but also believed no one ever ran out of second chances.
And this, Cueno believes, is the second prerequisite for healing. More than the person's desire to be whole again, the gift transforming a "hardcore" professional is nothing but a miracle of conversion.
(November 17, 2003 issue)
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