02 September 2011

By Raymond Billy | ResonateNews.com

Mumbai, India, is reputedly home to the world's most populous contingent of sex workers. They number in the tens of thousands in this city of nearly 20 million people. Among them are many mothers who struggle to make their work inconspicuous to their children.

Chacko Joy, an exchange student from India living in Tyler, Texas, said shielding younger children from knowledge of prostitution is particularly difficult.

“Prostitutes with infants sometimes have to take their children inside while they're 'entertaining' clients. Memories of these encounters are often seared into the child's mind,” said the 35-year-old Joy. “Even if they're too young to know what's going on, those memories often surface later on and have very negative consequences for the child.”

Harish Jonn, also an exchange student from India living in Tyler, said this exposure often desensitizes children to prostitution.

“They get used to the situation and seeing the mother handle the situation,” Jonn, 28, said. “It becomes a normal way of life for them.”

That familiarity helps facilitate children's induction into trafficking, said Steve Davis, executive director of the nonprofit Justice & Mercy International, or JMI.

“A lot of the children of prostitutes become prostitutes. Some of them will also be sold to work in different trades,” said Davis, of Franklin, Tenn., who spoke at Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler on Sunday to share information about JMI's missionary trip to India in early 2012. “The part that we're focused on stopping is the sex-slave trade.”

JMI is partnering with Bombay Teen Challenge in Mumbai. Part of Teen Challenge's mission there is to provide “shelters for children of women used in prostitution,” according to the organization's website. Davis said many trafficked women are grateful for a place to rescue their children from street life.

“Obviously many of them want their kids to get as far away from the life of prostitution as possible,” Davis, 58, said. “So they're eager to partner with Bombay Teen Challenge.”

Davis said he hopes to use JMI to steer funding toward Teen Challenge on behalf of Indian orphans.

“Right now, Teen Challenge is meeting a lot of the orphans' needs. With the funding that will come from our sponsorship program, we can help provide for the needs of those kids,” Davis said. “The more that we can take that financial load off them, the more they continue to expand their ministry.”

Under JMI's sponsorship program, donors can send money through the organization to subsidize the living expenses of Indian orphans living at Bombay Teen Challenge's Ashagram, Jubilee I, or Jubilee II Mumbai shelters. The organization is asking for $50 per child, per month. As part of the sponsorship commitment, donors will have “the opportunity to communicate love and encouragement to a young person and form life-long relationships” to encourage Indian youths, according to a JMI brochure. Davis admonished Christians, in particular, to heed the opportunity to invest in Indian orphans and — by extension — the maternal aspirations of their sex-trafficked mothers.

“How many Christians in Tyler know the name of a prostitute? How many know the name of an orphan?” Davis said. “If we don't know their names, how can we know the heart of our lord if we're not hanging around with the same kinds of people that he extended grace and mercy to? That really is convicting to me and I think it will give my organization direction going forward in terms of the kind of missions we tackle.”

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