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Shared Hope International News Release
June 14, 2002
Contact: Karrie
Delaney
Director of Communications
Tel: 703.351.8062
Karrie@sharedhope.org
Shared Hope Testifies before the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee
Washington, DC (June 14, 2002) - Testimony of 3 girls, sold into sexual slavery when merely 8 years old, will be shared by Former Congresswoman Linda Smith at the House International Relations Committee hearing on June 19, 2002.
On Wednesday, June 19, Former Congresswoman Linda Smith will testify before the U.S. House Committee on International Relations hearing, entitled, "Foreign Government Complicity in Human Trafficking: A Review of the State Department's 2002 Trafficking In Persons Report.
Linda Smith will testify on behalf of 3 girls that her organization, Shared Hope International, has rescued from lives of sexual slavery. Gina and Ganga were as young as 8 years old when they were tricked and sold into sexual slavery.
For 10 years Ganga was drugged, kidnapped, and locked up in a cell that only opened for her next client. Gina was sold by her father, taken from her home in Nepal, and forced to work in a Bombay brothel. Mannisha was the child of a sex slave and hid under her mother's bed until Shared Hope came and rescued her.
Since leaving Congress in 1999, Linda Smith has opened 19 homes in three countries-India, Nepal, and Jamaica- that serve as places of refuge and restoration for victims of human trafficking. Most of the individuals being served were sold by their parents or stolen by traffickers and forced to work in brothels. On June 6, Smith submitted written testimony to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, commending the State Department for its Trafficking In Persons (TIP) report but expressing concern over the decision to place India and Nepal in a tier 2 rating. "In the three countries where Shared Hope is working, we have seen no significant evidence of positive or effective government action to curb the trafficking problem. There have been very few prosecutions of traffickers in India and Nepal. There has been very little work done to change what we see as continued tolerance for children being used and abused. There has been very little done to inform and educate women about the dangers of trafficking or to provide legal safeguards for women." "We want to continue to shine a bright light on countries where human trafficking is still rampant…the trafficking bill will not be an effective tool for change unless we tell the truth about what is really going on in countries where we know human trafficking is a problem."
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