Atypical nuns seek justice in atypical ways
On Monday morning, Sandy Schmidt, a travel agent at the Spokane Valley office of AAA Washington/Inland, sat in front of posters proclaiming the charms of Hawaii. Mahalo days! In walked two sisters of the Holy Names, Karen Conlin and Phyllis Taufen. The nuns wore stylish business suits.
They weren’t interested in Hawaii. No mahalo. They carried in their file folders and their hearts the stories of young girls they will never meet. These girls live in countries where their families are so desperate for money that they sell their daughters, hoping they will find better lives in the United States. But these young girls are trafficked into sex slavery.
It’s a cold word – trafficked. No humaneness in it at all. And that’s why the 1,500 Holy Names sisters worldwide have taken it on as their cause. Their mission is to help oppressed humans realize their full potential.
The sisters showed Schmidt a UNICEF-funded “Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism.” They are encouraging Inland Northwest travel agencies to commit to the code.
The sisters told Schmidt about some tourism-industry red flags. A person who books regular trips to sex-trade hot spots – Costa Rica is one now – could be a broker for child-sex tours, popular with U.S. pedophiles.
And some of the mail-order-bride travel is really sex slavery packaged in romantic nuptials. Five years ago, Anastasia King of Kyrgyzstan was murdered by her Seattle husband; they met through an unregulated mail-order-bride company. Around the same time, young girls were lured to Anchorage from Russia with the promise of performing there as folk dancers. Instead, they were forced to work in strip clubs, according to the June 2004 Washington State Task Force Against Trafficking of Persons Report.
After the tsunami, the sisters reminded Schmidt, sexual predators descended upon refugee camps in search of young people to kidnap. The U.S. State Department estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 people, mostly women and children, are trafficked across borders annually, and between 14,000 and 17,000 end up in the United States. Conlin, a cellist with the Spokane Symphony, visited with law enforcement officials who said they weren’t aware of a problem in Spokane or North Idaho – yet.
Schmidt listened politely to the sisters. She asked, “If someone comes in and we’re suspicious, what would we do?”
The sisters said, “Call the police.” And call the national Human Trafficking Hotline – (888) 373-7888.
Taufen, who taught for 53 years until her recent retirement, told Schmidt that she considers this work an extension of teaching. Schmidt was not educated by Roman Catholic sisters, but she said, “I’ve heard stories from those who were!”
The sisters laughed. They know that in our culture we still stereotype nuns as knuckle-rapping disciplinarians or meek holy flowers. But many modern “women religious” – as they prefer to be called – have traded their habits for jeans, the appropriate garb to live and work among the oppressed; 1 million sisters from 800 orders of women religious have pledged to educate the world about what’s happening to Earth’s most vulnerable citizens.
This trafficking travesty has not reached mainstream awareness in the Inland Northwest, but it’s only a matter of time before a mail-order bride here is murdered, or some shady international sex-trade operation surfaces locally. The good societal trends move inward toward us from the coast. The evil ones do, too.
All the Holy Names sisters here are marching ahead of the trend, the way mothers raged against drunken drivers in the days when people still drove home from work while sipping from quarts of beer.
Sisters of the Holy Names might show up soon at your travel agency to tell you the stories of women and children who travel against their will into lives of despair. Please take the time to listen.