In this United Nations story, a teenager was trafficked between Burundi and Tanzania, in East Africa. Four years ago, 12-year-old Elisabeth (her name was changed for safety purposes) sought after domestic work in Tanzania as a minor, to ensure that she had food and a bed to sleep in. She expected no money, but only shelter and provisions for her work. Elisabeth had been abandoned by her mother and left with her poor grandparents at the age of infancy. She struggled to feed herself and found shelter with a friend of hers. When she heard of the opportunities in Tanzania, she left Burundi to have her basic needs met. Life in Tanzania was not as she hoped, and she was moved from family to family. One family she was sent to informed her that she was to have a “new husband,” to which she refused. The men of the house went to the bar to drink and when they had returned they trapped Elisabeth in the room with her “new husband.” When Elisabeth again refused the marriage proposal, because of her age, the man stated that he “had already paid her dowry in beers.” After brutally raping Elisabeth, the man threw her out into the street to sleep and told her that she was “still a child.” Even though people heard her screams through the thin walls of the house, no one came to her rescue. Scarred and scared Elisabeth continued to survive until a neighbor finally called an organization that helped Elisabeth return to Burundi and begin a profession of dress-making.
For four years Elisabeth endured this treatment. She was raped as a child and demeaned in her work. It is disgusting to me that people would not come to the aid of a minor who obviously was struggling to survive. In class, we have been discussing the trauma associated with violence, and the violence in Elisabeth’s case is non-consensual sexual violence. The IMO organization has helped Elisabeth through her trauma and at 16 years old Elisabeth is finally beginning her life. I am heartbroken that Elisabeth’s innocence and childhood were torn away from her, but I am proud of the person that she is becoming despite all of the trials that she has endured. What Elisabeth has experienced in her 16 years of life holds more trauma than I ever, as a 19-year-old, could even imagine.
http://First Person: ‘I am not old enough to be a woman’ says trafficked teen