The quiet work of liberating trafficked women from slavery

Cardinal Vincent Nichols turns deeply earnest as he leans forward from his armchair to recalls an early encounter with human trafficking.

“The first person I met, who really shocked me,” he says, “was a blonde woman with blue eyes, white skin and was from England. She was cajoled into going to Italy supposedly with her boyfriend and then was held as a sex slave for the next 10 years.”

Cardinal Nichols has been on a learning curve since 2012 when police turned to the Church for assistance amid a surge of foreign women trafficking into the capital to work as prostitutes during the London Olympics.

His eyes have been opened to the enormity and scale of “a systematic trade in human beings” and he has been fighting against it since.

His efforts means that this Christmas, at a Catholic Church-run safe house in the heart of central London, about a dozen women from as many countries dined together knowing that they are safely beyond the reach of the criminals who trafficked them into the country to exploit them abhorrently.

Since Caritas Bakhita House was opened by the Archdiocese of Westminster in 2015 a total of 188 women, aged between 15 and 70, have been referred there by the police “for as long as they need to stay”. They have hailed from 49 countries, with Romanians comprising the largest group, accounting for 37 women, and Albanians the second most numerous with 21. Substantial numbers have also come from Vietnam, China, Bulgaria, Brazil, Poland, India, Hungary, Nigeria and Ethiopia.

Overwhelmingly they were victims of sexual exploitation or serious sexual assault (134 cases). Some have arrived pregnant and a total of 14 babies have been born to women staying at the house. Other residents were rescued from domestic servitude (52 cases), or were groomed, trapped in sham marriages or forced into slave labour.

The evidence they have provided to the police has sent criminals to jail for a combined 188 years and four months. Those convicted included a serial rapist who in January 2023 was locked away for 31 years.

Together, the rescued women represent a microcosm of the hidden world of the misery, living testaments to the “intrinsic evil” of trafficking, as the scourge was described by the Second Vatican Council, and more recently by Pope Francis as a “wound in the body of humanity and therefore in the body of Christ himself”.

The global phenomenon of human trafficking in 2014 prompted Cardinal Nichols to help to establish the Santa Marta Group, of which he remains president, to bring together international actors in a coordinated attempt to address the “endemic and deeply embedded” problem of an estimated 50 million people trapped in modern-day slavery.

“The Santa Marta Group initially began to emerge in the midst of the abuse crisis,” says Cardinal Nichols reflectively. “Here was abuse as slavery.

“I remember one interview that Bernard Hogan-Howe [the former head of the Metropolitan police force] gave when we had a Santa Marta meeting. He was asked by a pretty cynical Channel 4 News interviewer why on earth he was cooperating with the Catholic Church. His answer was that human trafficking is a global network committed to evil and exploitation and the Catholic Church is global network committed to human dignity and good.”

The record of the Church in combatting this network of evil is indeed impressive. Religious sisters, in particular, are today working with slavery victims in 80 countries through such groups as Renate and Talitha Kum in continental Europe, Unanima in the United States, and Amrat and Acrath in South East Asia and Australasia.

In London, the Sisters of Mercy have been rescuing prostitutes through their Women at the Well project for more than 20 years, while a total of 16 religious congregations in the UK have provided 29 properties worth nearly £16.4 million to shelter victims. Nine of these buildings have become safe houses for men and women rescued from slavery. Archbishop Malcolm McMahon of Liverpool has recently made property, and a grant of £50,000, available specifically to shelter male victims of trafficking.

The majority of safe houses are run secretly by the Medaille Trust, which today is the UK’s largest dedicated shelter charity for enslaved people, and they include a large refuge for both women and children. An ecumenical group with Catholic foundations, it takes its name from the French Jesuit Fr Jean Pierre Medaille, founder of the Sisters of St Joseph, who have been active in liberating women from prostitution in the south of England.

It was in such a spirit that Cardinal Nichols founded Bakhita House. Named after St Josephine Bakhita, the Sudanese former slave canonised in 2000 by Pope St John Paul II, the safe house was set up with the help of Sisters from the Institute of Our Lady of Mercy, and the Adoratrices – the Congregation of Handmaids of the Blessed Sacrament and of Charity, an order with a charism of liberation.

For all intents and purposes, it must be closed to the world – its location kept a strictly guarded secret because of the risk of reprisals from criminal gangs, meaning that the modern day success story of an effective response to people in direst need, who are close to the hearts of all during this festive season, goes unsung and largely unnoticed. 

Yet for a few weeks in autumn the spotlight was at last turned on this quiet and steady work for the most unexpected of reasons. Marley, the resident black and white former stray cat, was named the 2024 National Cat of the Year and suddenly journalists everywhere wanted to know just why this cat was so special.

Karen Anstiss, the former police officer who runs Bakhita House, found herself explaining to the media that Marley was a “wonderful example of the power of love” who had carved for himself a vital role in rehabilitating women who often arrived traumatised.

“He has this incredible gift of empathy and has assisted many, many women along the road to recovery,” she told the BBC. “Often Marley placing a paw on our guests’ legs is the first kindness they’ve experienced in years.”

“Before he went into rescue,” she continued, “I think he had a hard time. So, he recognises our guests’ trauma because he has suffered too. Initially he sits really close, to see how the women respond. Then he gently puts a paw on their leg letting them know they’re not alone.

“We had one guest who was so traumatised she didn’t speak to us – only to Marley – and because she trusted him, over time we were able to reach her.”

Cardinal Nichols noted that the media interest in Marley carried the story of Bakhita House and the rescue of women from slavery to an estimated 5.5 million people, jesting that if he had a pound for every internet hit the Catholic Church would be able to do so much more for women who are so desperately in need.

The costs of running Bakhita House alone are £360,000 a year. In this Jubilee Year of Hope the Church is reminded that Our Lord came to proclaim liberty to captives. We can help to make Christ present by supporting this good work and similar initiatives.

(Photo by KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP via Getty Images)

The post The quiet work of liberating trafficked women from slavery first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post The quiet work of liberating trafficked women from slavery appeared first on Catholic Herald.