2023-09-23 05:09:00
September 23, 202300:09
The image and smell of that room remained in his retinas and nose for several weeks. It was a windowless room, illuminated with a dim light. On the floor, a mattress with blood stains. On the mattress, a 19-year-old girl with intellectual disabilities, who was sexually exploited right there, in that room of a family house in a neighborhood in the interior of Jujuy. Next to the mattress was the guy who had paid to abuse her.
to the young woman One man after another raped her, from 9 in the morning until dawn. He had arrived at that house where a clandestine brothel operated, located just 12 blocks from where his parents lived, with the promise of a job: taking care of an elderly person. However, she had something else waiting for her. He had 15 minutes to eat and, the rest of the day, the abuse continued without respite.
“Her two pimps had tricked her and told her that she was going to take care of an elderly woman. She was captured in her own neighborhood and she was in a situation of complete vulnerability. It took me a long time to recover from that image,” recalls Sara Gabriela “Gaby” Burgos, who is a religious of the international congregation Missionaries Servants of the Holy Spirit and a member of the Executive Committee to Fight Human Trafficking and Exploitation, that depends on the national State. Originally from Jujuy, within that organization she operates in the Northeast region of the country, which in addition to that province includes Salta, Tucumán, Santiago del Estero, Catamarca and La Rioja.
On the International Day against Sexual Exploitation and Human Trafficking, Gaby, who is a social psychologist, explains that in the NOA this was a very particular year “because every month there are rescues” of victims of labor or sexual exploitation. “After the pandemic, these networks once again acted very actively, especially in the north of our country. In the case of Jujuy, it affects that it is a border province, but also the indifference or ignorance of the population about this problem”, he assures.
According to data from the Birth Program for Rescue and Support for People Harmified by the Crime of Trafficking, From January to August 2023 there were 1,362 rescues and assistance to victims (in all of last year, however, there were 1,186), of which 56 era girls, boys and adolescents. The most frequent modalities are, first of all, for purposes of labor exploitation (962 cases), followed by sexual exploitation (271) and reduction to servitude (104). The NOA has 35 rescues so far this year; while Buenos Aires (353 cases), Córdoba (237), CABA (210) and Mendoza (203) are the jurisdictions with the most cases.
Gaby (in pink) along with other leaders in the fight against trafficking. Gentleness
In addition, in the country there are 21,894 current complaints of missing people, that is, with an active search. Of that total, more than 50% correspond to boys and girls up to 17 years old. The data, which arise from a request for access to public information made and analyzed by LA NACION Data, reveal that, of that total, 4,089 complaints correspond to disappearances of babies up to 12 months old. While the age segment that has the most complaints is that of adolescence: the group from 12 to 17 years old accumulates a third of the total, 18,592 complaints.
A few weeks ago, the premiere in theaters of “Sound of Freedom,” the film based on the true story of a North American agent who manages to rescue dozens of children from a trafficking network in Colombia, exposed precisely the drama of sexual exploitation. in the childhood.
The rescue of the 19-year-old girl occurred on a Saturday this year. She was giving training when they called her and asked if she could attend an operation. There she met the girl. “I lived abroad for many years and in Papua New Guinea I saw how they had burned two women accused of being witches, but nothing had ever impacted me as much psychically as the image of that young woman in that room, with her abuser right there: when we arrived the “I was raping,” describes the nun.
The rescue of that young woman could be carried out after an investigation began from a neighbor’s call to the toll-free number 147which operates 24 hours a day and is attended by trained professionals from the National Rescue and Support Program for Persons Damaged by the crime of Human Trafficking. This year, they received 1,304 complaints.
“Dissemination among citizens is key, we must continue socializing line 145, because in this case everything was uncovered thanks to that neighbor who saw how the girls entered and left the place. They are those key people. I call them ‘neighboring cameras’, because they are the ones who often detect these situations. It was a family house, that was the facade, and In the background there was a brothel. Everyone involved will be prosecuted,” details Gaby.
In Papua New Guinea, where he worked for years. Gentleness
Although Sara Gabriela is called Gaby, whenever she is interviewed she gives her full name to avoid confusion, since in her province there is a representative who is also called Gabriela Burgos. She has been a nun for almost 25 years and lives in San Salvador de Jujuy, in a convent. Within her congregation, she was always dedicated to working with women and, particularly, with those victims of trafficking and exploitation. She first did it in Australia, where she lived for 12 years, and then trained in humanitarian interventions in Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong and Singapore. In addition, she belonged to the international team of Talitha Kum, an organization whose objective “is to work on prevention and assistance to other religious congregations that are dealing with these problems,” she details.
In 2016, he returned to Argentina and continued with prevention tasks, until he was offered to join the NOA team of the Executive Committee to Fight Human Trafficking and Exploitation. “The crime is mutating around the world: today it is very present in the digital world through grooming and its connection with the production of images of sexual exploitation of girls, boys and adolescents,” she points out.
He says that in April, in a rescue, a teenager was found who had been recruited for sexual exploitation. “It was through a deception: he was supposedly going to sponsor that minor and he was going to be taken to the capital to study, something that usually happens in Jujuy,” says Gaby.
Being a border province, Jujuy It is a territory of transit, recruitment and reception of human trafficking. “We had several cases of boys and girls accompanied by adults who could not validate their relationship with the minor. Although control on the routes has greatly improved, there are other illegal steps that traffickers use,” she emphasizes. Last year, they had a case involving a 4-year-old boy: “He was kidnapped in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He had a search request for his disappearance and they found him in Tres Cruces, Jujuy, with two men who were transporting him and whose destination was Buenos Aires. He was able to make the rescue thanks to the bilateral agreements that exist with Bolivia that allow for faster coordination and with greater powers.”
In the training she gives, Gaby warns that many people do not know well what trafficking is and what its scope is. “Not only is it for purposes of sexual or labor exploitation, but there are also coercive organizations [como la llamada “secta del horror” que operaba en una escuela de yoga en Villa Crespo] and there are other modalities like forcing people into begging, forced marriage or reduction to servitude. If we do not spread these other modalities, they will continue to happen with impunity,” he states.
On the other hand, he says that this crime is “camouflaged” within the different regions according to the sociocultural contexts. For example, something that caught his attention when he returned to Argentina, was meeting “people who had sold their babies” in the city of Perico in Jujuy. In that sense, remember that in Argentina the crime of buying and selling babies, girls and boys (and their intermediation) is not classified as such in the Penal Code, which the Inter-American Court of Justice has been demanding from the country for more than one year. of a decade (after an emblematic 2012 case, “Fornerón and Hija vs. Argentina”).
“We ask society to call 145 if there is any suspicion of human trafficking and exploitation,” he says. Courtesy
The last case in which Gaby intervened was a month ago and involved two teenage sisters. One of them had met a man through social networks, who paid them a taxi to travel from the town of Pichanal, Salta, to Santiago del Estero. On the way, they were intercepted by security forces.
In the case of young victims of this crime, what Gaby observes is “great emotional vulnerability” beyond the socioeconomic: “Many tell you: ‘I don’t want to return to my province because my stepfather or my father commits physical and sexual violence.’ What I perceive at this time is that they are not contained in their families and They connect through social networks with people from other provinces who often end up capturing them.”.
In Santiago del Estero, he points out, there is high traffic for the purposes of labor exploitation. “Labor exploitation is not only that you are not paid or paid the minimum, but it is also linked to working conditions that are naturalized in some high-need contexts, where people live in subhuman conditions and assume debts with their exploiters who “They never finish paying.”
A case that surprised her due to the magnitude of the violence was that of a group of young people who were rescued from the olive harvest in La Rioja: “They told us that every 15 days they were taken to a police station, where there was clearly collusion with the police and extorted their families, asking them for 15 or 20 thousand pesos to set them free. “They didn’t give them food and they beat him.”
Gaby considers that the fact that there are more rescues also speaks to the fact that “the Gendarmerie, the Federal Police and the prosecutor’s offices are implementing the training they received, they have an alert eye to perceive the indicators and they know how line 145 works, which fulfills a key role because most of the interventions are thanks to the calls received there”. On the other hand, he explains that of all the interventions that are made, some do not advance in judicial processes such as human trafficking or exploitation, but are instead linked to related crimes.
Accompanying victims of trafficking to rebuild their lives is a long and complex path. Gaby considers it essential to focus on access to fundamental rights such as mental health (with psychological assistance sustained over time), work and housing. “It is a process that does not only involve rescuing the victim, but it is necessary to coordinate with all other provincial organizations to see how we assist them,” he emphasizes.
In that sense, considers it key that each province enacts its own work quota law for victims, something that in Jujuy, although the project exists, has not yet been achieved. “Another challenge is that the focal points can assist their victims from the conviction thatWe are dealing with human beings, not with a number or statistics.. That is to say, that we can work from empathy, that institutions have this sensitivity of looking at the other as a person and that their rights are restored after having gone through the greatest violence that can exist towards a human being,” he summarizes. . Gaby ends with a message for citizens: “We ask that if you suspect any human trafficking or exploitation, call 145.”
Line 145: All calls are answered by trained professionals from the National Rescue and Support Program for Persons Damaged by the crime of Human Trafficking. You can report:
If you want to know what to do during the first hours of a person’s disappearance, you can access this LA NACION guide with all the necessary information on how to proceed.
Let’s talk about sexual abuse: in this guide from Fundación La Nación you can find more information about where to ask for help and warning signs.
Conocé The Trust Project
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