A plight of a victim of sex trafficking deserves attention
A crowded club in Wan Chai red light district
Each year, thousands of tourists visit Lockhart Road - a famous red light district in Wan Chai, which happens to be a few blocks away from the police station. Walking down the street, mamasans – the female pimps, sitting in front of the strip clubs, smile at the male pedestrians and invite them to go inside the clubs.
It is here that Tala, a 24–year–old single mother, who came from the Philippines to Hong Kong three years ago, is forced into sex works.
“Life was hell. I was just surviving,” Tala recalls. She first arrived in Hong Kong on a tourist visa and her mamasan arranged a domestic worker visa for her to stay longer.
She was told that she owed heavy debt for the air tickets, visas, and accommodation. This was not what her recruiter had promised to offer a decent job in a restaurant. Felt frustrated to raise her toddler daughter without family support, she took the job out of distress.
To pay off the “debts”, she had to sell sex for four times a night. “Of course it’s like torture to pay back the debt,” she recalls. “The agent doesn’t care. They don’t know how clients treat you badly.”
A typical arrangement involves the client paying HK$5,000 for a whole night with a sex worker. Only HK$1,000 would go to the girl while the rest would all go to either the bar owner or mamasan. On some occasions, Tala was unable to keep even that HK$1,000 to pay off the “debts”.
Tala could earn around HK$4,000 on the better nights. But her mamasan had never told her how much she paid back in debts, though she estimates she paid back more than 1 million pesos (HK$155,000).
Worst of all, the mamasan would force her to take hard drugs with clients to gain extra money and lure them to stay at the bar.
“Clients ask you to buy drugs like cocaine, ice, marijuana, anything the clients want. They make you take it with them. We could earn a lot of money from using drugs with clients,” Tala says. Unfortunately, she got addicted to drugs which was indeed the strategy of the mamasan to better control the sex workers.
The Wan Chai Police Station is just few blocks away from the bar where Tala had been forced for sex works
There came to a time when Tala could not take it anymore. She got pregnant by a client and had to get an abortion. She says the drugs, sex and abuses were consuming her.
Maylin Hartwick, a pastor’s wife at Harmony Baptist church, saved Tala from her plight. They met at the bar during Hartwick’s regular outreach in Wan Chai’s red light district.
Hartwick helped her to buy a plane ticket back to the Philippines. “Many people may ask why they wouldn’t just escape from the mamasan,” Hartwick says, “but lots of bar girls did not get family support and even considered the mamasan as their mothers. Because the mamasan would praise the girls all the time, and developed a “bonding” with them.”
Hartwick refers to it as a “Stockholm Syndrome” situation, in which a hostage relies on the captor as a survival strategy. She says it is hard for us to imagine their feelings unless we have gone through the trauma.
It is the same reason why Tala did not find a way out. Tala is estranged with her family. Her ex–boyfriend left after Tala gave birth to their daughters.
That was her life for two years, an ordeal that will stay with her as long as she lives. “It was very traumatic,” Tala says, “I can hardly talk about it.”
After going back to the Philippines, Hartwick referred Tala to a shelter where she could finish her high school diploma. It was difficult at first, but she has been studying hard for the public exams.
Hartwick has been helping with her daughter’s tuition fees, who is now five – year - old. “My daughter keeps me going. I’m studying to finish my high school education,” says Tala,“ I want to go back to a normal life... I want dignity.”
Unfortunately, Tala runs away from the shelter recently and Hartwick cannot contact her anymore. Hartwick feels sad and helpless.“She is haunted by her past so much that she can't focus on anything, because of the drugs that she had been taking for a long time,” she sighs.
Please note that the quotes of the woman are derived from an article in South China Morning Post (refers to http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2071873/i-was-forced-sell-my-body-hong-kong-bar-filipinos-experience). And the background information and updates of the woman are provided by Maylin Hartwick. Name of the woman in this article has been altered for privacy.
