200 women came walking through the breezeway at 10:00am into an old building in Kolkata(Calcutta), India. During the time just before their day of work at the clothing center, it came in a strong grip to me … these women were actually “saved”, saved from the slavery of the sex trade industry. Photography and interviews were forbidden due to all types of risks to these women and those helping them. We were however allowed to speak openly with the leadership, in this one of seven organizations we the GHNI team investigated for our TCD work in the “source” villages these women came from. Words cannot describe how sobering it was. Most trickery and deception comes when the girls are hardly or not at all in puberty. Within a ½-mile radius of our location, there were 20,000 women in prostitution, with 40,000 clients each night. The 200 women in front of us seemed so few in comparison.
Daniel at GHNI 