The Trafficked

35

Back on the street, Father Finn started the engine and turned the car around. Mann insisted Becky sat in the front this time. He knew she would want to ask Father Finn a lot of questions, he could see it in her face. She might have seen poverty on a backpacker’s trip to India but there was nothing like having this kind of real insight into a world that most would never want to know.

Mann opened the windows in the back and looked long and hard at the slums that they were all so grateful to leave behind.

‘Has she lived there since she left the refuge, Father?’ asked Becky.

‘Yes, she came back here when she found out she was pregnant, and she brought her daughter up here. She lives for that little girl. It’s not easy on your own, but Wednesday has done a good job with Maya. I talked to the teachers at the school and they say Maya’s a bright little girl and always clean and tidy. Wednesday’s own mother sold her to a bar owner when she was seven. He was, and still is, a known paedophile in the Angeles area. He promised he would send her to school and that she would grow up in his household. I don’t for one minute expect the mother believed a cock and bull story like that-but it eased her conscience, no?’

They headed towards town. The city began to build up around them.

‘Wednesday has done well to make it, once the girls are broken it is very hard to make them whole again-they often run back to the bar owners when they are rescued.’

‘I know all the reasons on paper but I will never really understand how a mother can sell her own daughter?’

‘Poverty Ignorance. It’s hard to understand, but it goes back further than one generation. It isn’t easy bringing up any child, especially an Amerasian. Wednesday’s father was an American sailor who left when the Clark naval base shut down and he deserted her and her mother.’

‘Doesn’t she have any rights?’

‘The American government ruled that they were the children born from prostitution, but it isn’t true-lots of these women were common-law wives.’

‘But the children, can’t they find their real fathers now?’

‘I have helped some track their fathers. I have helped them write letters. Of the dozens we have sent, only one has come back and that was because the man wanted to put his affairs in order as he was dying of cancer.’ Father Finn was clearly moved and angry as his voice climbed in pitch and his face reddened. ‘The men who abandoned these women and children simply don’t care.’ He banged his palms on the old leather steering wheel and caused a volley of beeping horns as he veered to the left. Mann sat up in the back and moved forward. ‘The American bases did untold damage here,’ Father Finn continued. ‘I believe it also ruined the men themselves-they came over here as young, impressionable lads, they witnessed the demeaning of women, the rape of children, and they became desensitised. In those days it wasn’t uncommon to witness spectacles such as boxing matches staged between the girls. You have to ask yourself what that would do to the mind of a young man, no?’ Father Finn shook his head sadly.

‘What do you think has happened to Maya, Father?’ asked Becky.

The father sighed. ‘I know it’s an odd thing to hope for, but our best scenario is that the child is a victim of traffickers and that she is still in the Philippines. The alternative is that she is already dead, killed by the DDS or has been trafficked abroad.’

‘But, if she’s alive and still in the Philippines, she could be anywhere by now, couldn’t she, Father?’

They came to a standstill in the rush-hour traffic heading through the city. Exposed bunches of black cables hung down like destroyed spiders’ webs and crisscrossed the street above their heads. All around them workers were hanging out of the side of Jeepneys. Becky no longer needed to shout, but her chest felt tight with the fumes coming in the open window. People smiled at her as they watched her from the traffic jam. She couldn’t get over how friendly they were.

Mann bought a breadfruit from a man walking along the rows of stationary traffic selling a variety of goods from fruit to feather dusters and fishing rods.

‘Luckily…’ he leaned in between the two front seats ‘…it does not affect the whole of the seven thousand islands-there are distinct sex tourism areas. I think Angeles is where she’ll be-it has the seediest reputation.’

‘I agree,’ said Father Finn. ‘There is one man there worse than the rest; he calls himself the Colonel. He is the man who pimped Wednesday all those years ago and he is still there.’ Father Finn shook his head in disbelief. ‘He has set himself up as a God in Angeles; it should not be allowed to happen.’

Mann turned the breadfruit round absent-mindedly in his hands as he spoke.

‘I know the Colonel. I’ve been watching him over the years. His network of paedophile businesses has been allowed to continue for so long that now he believes no one can touch him. But he’s made a mistake siding with his new friends-the White Circle-they are a new trafficking group who are muscling their way in. The kidnap of the girl in the UK is linked to them and their power struggle. He might think he’s about to hit it big, but he’s wrong. His time just ran out. We will find Maya, find out who has Amy Tang, and then we will shut him down, Father, once and for all. If the locals won’t do it-we’ll do it for them.’ He looked at his hands-he had ruined the breadfruit.

‘If Maya is alive then she could well be hidden there, no? She will probably be being seasoned.’ Father Finn glanced over at Becky. He did not want to have to explain the term-he didn’t need to.

‘I know what “seasoning” is,’ said Becky. ‘It’s a softening-up process preparing them for the ordeal, making them ready to be sold for sex, to accept it and not give any trouble. It involves different stages: intimidation, isolation, disorientation, bullying and violence. Then, when their spirit is broken, they are sold. Who would be most likely to buy her?’

‘A wealthy Asian or Caucasian,’ answered Father Finn. ‘She will be kept under lock and key and used for a week by him exclusively. Their virginity is the premium. It has all sorts of beliefs tied up in it: of course you’re not going to get AIDS from a virgin. Some of them even believe it can cure AIDS,’ added the Father, shaking his head incredulously. After a week their price drops, but they are still valuable. For the next two weeks they will be offered to select customers who can pay. After that they go into a brothel, chained to the bed like all the others. She will be servicing eight or more men a day and kept in nothing more than a cage. They get very sick. The life expectancy of a working girl in Angeles is not good, it has been reported as being twenty-five but no one can be sure. They don’t get enough food and they get beaten. TB still kills many, as do untreated STDs. AIDS is just starting here, but everyone is in denial about it. No one wants to admit to being HIV positive because that is the end of their working life then, and there is no help for them.’

All the time the Father was speaking, Becky held Maya’s photo in her hand and stared at it. ‘How will she survive all that?’

‘What is your plan now, you two?’ Father Finn changed the subject abruptly. He never liked to dwell too long in melancholy. He had lived with the poverty and degradation for so long that he knew it would break him if he didn’t hang on to hope.

‘I suggest we stay here tonight, Becky. See if anyone at the refuge can come up with anything to help us. Then we make our way up to Angeles.’

‘Thank the Lord!’ Father Finn crossed himself and flashed a mischievous look at Becky in the mirror as the traffic freed up and they were able to move slowly along the road. ‘My life wouldn’t be worth living if I came back to the refuge without you. When they knew Johnny Mann was coming it started them all off. It’s all the girls were talking about today. Where is Johnny? What time will he get here? How is my hair? Does my bum look big in this? They’d started bickering and fighting over who was going to wear what by the time I left.’

Mann started to protest. Becky laughed.

‘I bet they had.’

‘So, spend the night with us. I have a friend with a plane. He is at your disposal. You will like him. Remy was a priest, now married with too many children for me to count and a small airline business. He helps keep the mosquito population down by spraying insecticide now and again, and he is also the flying doctor when needs must. I will ring him now and organise for him to fly you up tomorrow. I have a few more days’ work here, then I’ll be heading back to Angeles to continue the search for Maya.’

They passed a sign on the road: a young girl in a tight white bodice was holding a bottle of whisky:

Have you ever tasted a fifteen-year-old?