According to the National Center for Justice and The Rule of Law, approximately 38,000 children are currently being prostituted in South Africa. Victims are often recruited from rural areas or informal centres and then transported to urban centres and cities. Boys under the age of 18 are also increasingly lured into sexual exploitation and used for pornography.
When I met Thabisile, it was barely two weeks since she was rescued from the streets. She was clearly still struggling with drug withdrawal symptoms and while we were walking, we sometimes had to stop so she could catch her breath. When she was rescued, she left with only the clothes on her body, which wasn't much. I was eager to help make things a little more bearable for her and asked what she needed. Her answer caught me completely off guard and I had to swallow the tears so she wouldn't see how my heart was breaking for her.
“If you can get me some Vaseline, ma’am, please. I will be grateful. When they chase us, we have to run and then we lose our shoes. My heels are severely cracked as a result of that and it is painful. During the winter I had to walk barefoot as I had lost so many shoes.”
Never before has a young person asked me for something as small as a bottle of Vaseline and received it with such gratitude, instead of expensive gadgets. The moment was almost too much for me.
In July this year, the Doctors for Life International (DFL) team reached out and took Thabisile off the street. For more than 15 years, her hard-earned money came from working on the street. All these years she was earning money in the most degrading ways just to pay for her drugs. There were no other benefits for her.
Thankfully, she never suffered abuse at home, but unfortunately, she did crave the shiny things in life, and that was the beginning of her downfall. She was drawn into the world of prostitution through a drug smuggler’s promises of mobile phones and other earthly possessions. And although the drug smuggler initially bought her a mobile phone, she had to sell drugs for it. He took it back after she became addicted to drugs, and he also did not keep his promises to give her shiny and material things.
Drugs are the first step to the hell of prostitution. Thabisile’s experience was not much different, she explained, “My street name was Andile and I was already addicted to cocaine at the age of 13. It helped me to forget about home and family and to do what was necessary to survive. My normal feelings came to an end at the age of 13. It wasn't long before the cocaine stopped doing its job, and I had to use stronger drugs. I then moved on to crystal meth, but craved more and more over time.”
I wish I could forget some of the gruesome stories she told me about what she went through as a young child on the streets. I don’t believe it will be helpful to repeat them. But as I struggled in my bed and repeated the stories over and over in my head that night after speaking to Thabisile, I wondered how and if she would ever be able to escape from the memories of street work.
Penny, a rehabilitated drug user and prostitute herself, has been around life’s mills a few times. She is now part of the DFL team, helping them to rescue prostitutes who ask them to help. The team goes out on Friday nights to look for and help girls in the Durban area. According to Penny, they currently have a waiting list of girls who need help. When a girl is tracked down, she will never be forced to go with the DFL team. She has to be ready and willing to say goodbye to the life of street work and drugs.
How can I warn the young Thabisiles of the world that the promises of mobile phones and modelling sessions are just a smoke screen to draw them into the world of prostitution and drugs? All I can hope for is that a real-life story about the life of a prostitute can maybe save or inspire someone else to look at prostitution differently. If it weren’t for organizations like DFL, the desperate and broken in the world would have no hope or chance of survival.
Special note: Visit www.doctorsforlife.co.za and www.ksb.org.za for more information and incredible testimonies like these. Follow the link to read the full story of Thabisile written by Gerda Potgieter: https://online.pubhtml5.com/asxvv/pgnm/
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