We Support This Woman's Right to Choose

“No puedo creerlo. I can’t believe it.” A young Spanish woman about 22 stares down at her humble plate of spaghetti. Her feet swing slightly under the white folding table, the adrenaline of her life still clearly amping through her nervous system. “This is a dream!” The beginning of tears are starting to form in her eyes as we assume that all this emotion is due to the hope of finally leaving the sex industry. But it’s not. She’s sitting in joyful disbelief simply because she’s eating a hot lunch, at a normal lunch time, at an actual table. Her mind hasn’t even begun to comprehend that she is about to finally walk through an open exit door to  leave behind a violent pimp and the drugs he’s used to hold her captive for a decade. 

We sit with this woman in our Algeciras Freedom Center in Spain and offer her a couple choices for how she’s like to proceed. It’s not up to us, it’s up to her. It’s our responsibility to resource and support her, to be her healthy community to empower her in the next stage of her life with the mentorship that a loving and healthy family would provide. It’s up to her to decide if she’s ready to face this positive but labor-some and sadly painful change. She chooses to leave the city immediately. This makes us nervous because selfishly we’d like to keep her closer to us, but she is legitimately in fear for her life and so we support her decision.

Over the course of the rest of that day our team went with this young lady to hunt down her ID card that a controller was keeping from her. She needed some travel funds, she needed clothing (because we weren’t able to get hers back from another controller), but most of all she just needed friends willing to be with her in each step. Our team helped this young woman get out of town safely that day. Even though we would have rather spent more time with her at the center where she could have received regular support to ensure a healthier transition out of exploitation, we also understand that she has to decide that she is ready for and wants this sort of support… and if and when she is ready, we will always be here to offer more practical care, more enduring love, and more resources. Until then, we celebrate that this young woman is out and safe and infused with hope for the first time in literally over a decade.

As we said our goodbyes that day we heard this young woman whispering to herself, “I can’t believe this… I am free, I am finally free!”

When donating to a cause as complex as human trafficking, it’s hard to know that your generosity is actually going to make a difference in the lives of those who need it most. Not Abandoned empowers freedom for exploited women in the darkest places around the world, so that your donations actually change the destiny of a woman’s life.