A former trafficker
- Mono Region, Benin
Traffickers are professionals; they know the hardships faced
by the families they approach and they know how to sell dreams.
The false promises they make are a necessary part of the job.
To traffickers, the children they trade are commodities, their
only concern is profit.
This woman worked as a trafficker for 26 years taking children
from Benin to Nigeria. She promised families that their
children would receive an education and well-paid work,
but instead she placed them with families who forced them
to work as domestic maids. She became rich while the girls
worked for nothing.
But this all changed when a young girl escaped from her
employer following a particularly brutal beating. The injured
girl was picked up at the Benin-Nigerian border, and the
truth of the trafficker's trade was revealed. As with most
trafficking cases, the sentence - five months - did not
reflect the severity of the crime. She was ordered to give
the girl her unpaid wages, but she refused. Selling all
her possessions in Nigeria, she escaped to Benin.
Today she remains unrepentant, saying that the girls she
trafficked had no future with their families, and were destined
to live a life of hardship.
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