Dear World,
While we learn about human trafficking, let's breathe in beauty
Trigger alert: Trafficking and sexual assault are mentioned. No explicit or detailed content is discussed.
“We must keep one another in touch with everything that happens in the various outposts of the world, each one contributing his own little piece of stone, to the great mosaic that will take shape once the war is over.”
- Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-43
I believe I’m preaching to one person in the choir. That person is me. If it touches you, I am so glad. I’m afraid that as a survivor of sexual assault, I feel so much for the survivors of Maxwell and Epstein. I am having trouble doing the things I will be asking you and me to do. Yet I will keep trying.
Let’s breathe between articles or videos about trafficking and sexual violence. Look at oranges and golds of wildflowers, sunrises and sunsets, water curling over rocks of streams, mysterious reflections on windshields, and shadows on rocks. Watch dog or cat videos. Inhale, at least virtually, fresh, pure, life-giving scents and sights in between.
Take a deep breath. Move and shake. Dance or watch dance. Stay as light as possible at this time when so much heartache and courage are experienced in our world. Though I can’t believe this can soothe our hearts fully, we can keep some breath flowing, some sparks of our hearts glowing. We can try. We who pray, or try to, can pray.
Trafficking is adding to the perils, persecution, and private horror of some of our most vulnerable: Children. Migrants. People in wartime. Men and women all over the world. Young women. Those who are vulnerable, without housing or money, and those who have been molested and sexually abused earlier in life. Those who trusted earlier in their lives that their bodies were their own before the abuse happened.
We are, gasp, seeing on the news the horrors experienced by the women sexually assaulted and trafficked by Maxwell and Epstein. These women seeking justice represent all those who the courageous survivor advocate and truth-teller, the late Virginia Giuffre, referred to as “my survivor sisters.” You may have seen these “sisters” at the February 11 House Judiciary Committee meeting. May the women be spoken to with compassion, accountability, and justice very soon. Or you may have seen other interviews with them.
When the cashier at Trader Joe’s the next day asks me how I am, and I say, “I watched too much news,” she nods. She relates. When I mention the young women and girls trafficked, she says, “It’s hard to be sure what’s true.”
I say, as my groceries are tallied, that it is not one person but a group who have come forward. The woman ringing up my food items nods. “Right,” she says. I’m surprised that anyone who sees and hears these women cannot feel their sincerity. But I remember that the media may present these non-partisan matters, these crimes against humanity against girls and women, in partisan ways on different outlets.
If you saw the recent House Judiciary Committee meeting, you witnessed a group of brave survivors, representing hundreds, if not thousands or millions of other young women and girls who have endured sexual violence and/or were trafficked internationally.
Trafficking of any kind is the lowest of the low. Let’s not hide it. Pretend it is not happening even as beauty, hopefully, holds us in the in between.
Let’s try to add one small stone to the mosaic of this world’s decency and respect for women. Elevate our consciousness. Stand with the women survivors. Justice will provide relief and heart medicine for thousands of women around the world who have survived, or are in the midst of enduring, sexual violence.
I held my breath along with thousands at the Judge Kavanaugh hearings, and every Congressperson who spoke on behalf of the women who sought justice and a fair investigation was a healer in my heart. A hero. I remember Senators Richard Blumenthal, Jeff Flake, and Daniel Moynihan. I wrote on Medium.com at the time that I had a bipartisan healing.
Current courageous advocates who are acting on their consciences are, to name only a portion of the brave people: Congresswomen and Congressmen: Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Pramila Jayapal, Roe Khanna, Ayanna Presley, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Mace. CNN anchor Kaitlin Collins has advocated for the survivors. The organizations “World Without Exploitation” and “Sexual Violence Prevention Association” are involved.
The strongest advocates, however, have been the survivors who have overcome mental, emotional, financial, and societal risks to come forward with strength and clarity. I hesitate to name their names in case one more mention cause an additional threat to be hurled against one or more of them, though many have courageously been willing to be introduced publicly, and some of their names were not redacted in the released Epstein files.
Each awareness or support we add will make a difference. One out of three women, or 840 million globally, are survivors of partner or sexual violence, reports the World Health Organization. Of these women, I suspect many are eagerly watching online, eager to hear words of support, accountability, and justice for survivors of sexual violence.
Each action, cheer or prayer, I believe, on behalf of survivors will add a flower to the Equality Tree of this world or a smooth stone to its base. It will cause a tip-toeing of tree roots to nuzzle and intertwine with spreading tree roots through the forests of this world.
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Resources on Trafficking and Sexual Assault:
A Global Report on Trafficking in Persons by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) “provides new information on a crime that shames us all.” https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report-on-trafficking-in-persons.html
U.N. Understanding Human Trafficking
https://www.un.org/en/peace-and-security/understanding-human-trafficking
https://www.state.gov/human-trafficking-hotlines
National Sexual Violence Resource Center https://www.nsvrc.org/survivors/#
RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline - https://rainn.org/help-and-healing/hotline/
“The emancipation of women, the achievement of full equality between the sexes, is one of the most important, though less acknowledged prerequisites of peace. The denial of such equality perpetrates an injustice against one half of the world’s population and promotes in men harmful attitudes and habits that are carried from the family to the workplace, to political life, and ultimately to international relations. There are no grounds, moral, practical, or biological, upon which such denial can be justified. Only as women are welcomed into full partnership in all fields of human endeavour will the moral and psychological climate be created in which international peace can emerge.”
Photos by penofgold
