Meena was in hospital waiting for admission at the casualty ward. Her near teen son, Amit, was waiting outside. He was reading. A man with a very friendly smile approached him. “What's your name? Are you hungry? Would you like to eat a chocolate?”Amit refused and continued reading. After some time, he watched as the ‘friendly’ person slowly retreated and then disappeared.
Gayle narrates how her father found sleeping toddlers and babies on their mothers’ shoulders in the streets begging during the day in the city. He said that he had noticed the same women with different babies after some days. During this period he had also read about a report in the newspaper listing statistics on missing children over the years. He was certain that these children too were possibly not with their biological mothers.
Kirk was a toddler when his ‘relative’ arrived at school one day and began persuading him to come along with him to meet his grandmother. He was not comfortable because he lived with his mother and siblings and his father was estranged. He also enjoyed to go with his classmates in the school bus. Fortunately his school teachers alerted his mother and was guided to protect the child. This situation has become a commonality today with the number of divorces and separation increasing and children becoming the victims of custody battles.
Tina is a school student. But has missed school for weeks and it was discovered that she was sitting at the bus stop waiting for her ‘pickup’. A lady would come to pick her up and take her to various places, hotels, apartments where she was commercially sexually exploited. She was doing this with consent. She was desperate to earn to be up to date with the latest trends in fashion and be popular with her peers. Her parents were unaware as they were busy with their jobs.
Sana along with her older brother Sparsh and little toddler sibling Parth are some of students of the Community Classroom. Their parents escort them from nearby and sometimes they walk by themselves. There are others like Kamlesh and Peter. They walk from their neighbourhood that’s nearly more than a kilometre away. Others like Neha, Sajid, Tom and Meera cycle from their neighbourhood close to the beach. A couple of near adult teens get dropped off and picked up by their parents.
During counselling sessions and awareness sessions they narrate their experiences of abuse by, ill treatment by family members. Others share about their exposure to vices by peers in school. Some talk about their trauma when they see violence, abuse and aggression of their fathers or brothers perpetrated on their mothers or other siblings.
Rahul who goes to a city school got into trouble because a classmate’s nude picture was circulated on social media. Another girl student was driven to near suicide when ‘her’ picture kissing a boy was shared on social media. She was shocked as somebody had morphed her face into the picture.
Saba and Ravi both teenagers, were approached by a well dressed lady at a friend's party asking them if they wanted to make fast money. They pretended to be interested. They were offered opportunities to peddle and deal with weed and other drugs or meet interested parties for sex dates! They could never contact the person again who must have sensed that there would be trouble coming her way.
Some of these incidents were shared at the Anti Human Trafficking Debate and Poster Competition organized by MOG Foundation and Mukti Kiran for schools in Goa. It was heartening to listen to the students make their opening statements, share statistics, best practices and give examples to debate, counter with rebuttals and answer tough questions by judges and the audience. The topics were really interesting on ‘Police is solely responsible or is civil society also responsible to combat human trafficking?’
The facts shared by the chief guest Superintendent of Police Training Suchita Desai, Hon’ble Judge of the Children’s Court for the State of Goa Sayonara Teles Laad, PI of Siolim Rahul Parab and the Chairperson of the Goa State Commission for Protection of Child Rights Peter F. Borges were shocking but insightful and created a lot of awareness about children, their rights and how these are been violated today.
The dark web in the virtual word is laying traps for children and teens. Today the phone has become a menace. While it’s a great communication tool, it’s misuse can be disastrous. It’s easy access to children is allowing for anyone and everyone into their personal spaces, their homes.
What can one do to protect children? Teachers, parents, institution heads, peers, students need to be made aware of the dangers that are waiting in the dark alleys of the virtual world to lure them into the dark and dangerous alleys of the physical world. The thrills and fun offered seem harmless but the damage that is long term is irreversible and this must be driven into our children's young and innocent minds.
Children are angels, born good. We are the custodians, each one of us and we must pledge and do our best to protect and safeguard their rights to safety and well being.
(Tallulah D’Silva is an architect and silver awardee of the Golden Door Award 2020 for truth and integrity)