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Religious lead fight against sex slavery
A CONVERSATION with Good Samaritan Sr Pauline Coll
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| By Marilyn Rodrigues
3 December, 2006 |
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| By MARILYN RODRIGUES |
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Today there are an estimated 1000 women working as sex slaves in Australia and as many as 300 are smuggled here each year, says Sister of the Good Samaritan, Sr Pauline Coll.
Most come to Australia from South-East Asia with the promise of waitressing or traditional
massage work but once they get here they are forced through lies, extortion, blackmail or violence, or a combination of these, to work in brothels for no pay.
Many are afraid of the police and Immigration Department officials, have little or no English or knowledge of where to go for help. If they know enough and are brave enough to testify against their captors they are offered a temporary witness protection visa. Many receive no help at all.
Sr Pauline says that sexual slavery is largely a hidden problem and also just a subset of the global trade in and exploitation of human life which includes the trafficking of woman and children, child sex tourism, trafficking of human organs and poor labour practices.
Sr Pauline is the co-ordinator of her congregation’s work against trafficking in women and children and a founding member of the national group, Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans, along with Sr Louise Cleary, Congregational leader of the Brigidine Sisters in Australia.
Although she has never met a woman who has been treated this way Sr Pauline belongs to an ever-growing network of organisations, charities, churches and individuals joining a war against slavery – especially the smuggling of women for prostitution – on many fronts and up to the highest levels.
Sr Pauline is happy to work in the background, developing networks, lobbying and speaking at schools and, earlier this year, at a rally of 120 members of the Australian Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes to raise community awareness on the issue.
“The collaborative model is a new way for us to do things,” she says.
“With our religious thin on the ground and ageing, we really have got much more power when we work together to change unjust structures.
“We don’t have to do all the work ourselves; there are many wonderful younger people and other groups working in this area and we can help them set things up.”
The religious network involves a host of men and women around the country, including the Mercy Sisters, Good Shepherd Sisters, Presentation Sisters, Sisters of Charity, Sisters of St Joseph and the Christian Brothers.
It has been working closely with many others, including Melbourne lobby group Project Respect and the Anti-Slavery Project at the University of Technology, Sydney.
The group commissioned Jennifer Burn, director of the anti-slavery project, and Melbourne barrister Georgina Costello to prepare a report on the issue which they presented early this year to the UN Committee for the Eradication of All Discrimination Against Women.
As a result the UN committee made similar recommendations to the Australian Federal Government, including to reform the visa for trafficked women and to provide more support and prevention strategies.
Sr Pauline recently returned from Canberra where she was part of a group lobbying MPs, prime ministerial advisers and community leaders on those recommendations, particularly for a change to the visa structure. They also met with the Australian Federal Police and church groups such as the Catholic Women’s League Australia.
“We’re asking them (the politicians) to take some action on visa reform so that the people who are trafficked, especially the women who are trafficked for sexual exploitation, are not victimised twice,” she says.
“Presently they can stay for a certain amount of time only if they are prepared to give evidence and act as witnesses for the prosecution.”
Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans was formed in response to the call of the Union of International Superiors’ General, who represent more than 800 congregations of women religious, to commit to the eradication of the trafficking of women and children.
There are five main goals. First, there is a need for research into the extent of the problem in Australia. The figure of 1000 women is an educated guess by Project Respect. There are very few women on the government support programs.
Then there is the need for safe houses for the women.
“There is none at the moment, although the Brigidine Sisters do offer some places,” says Sr Pauline.
“Nothing is instant because they have to be set up properly.
“And also to work most effectively you need to get the proper funding.
“These women have got to be protected.
“They’ve been traumatised and they’ve also been threatened with recriminations towards their
families in their home places.”
Another goal is building networks in the Asia-Pacific region, and to this end Sr Pauline is attending a counter-trafficking training course for religious personnel.
“It’s an opportunity to network with our Asia-Pacific counterparts. So many of the women who end up here come from there,” she says.
“The lobbying for visa reform is an ongoing work, as is the community awareness raising.”
Finally, the group is committed to supporting the Millennium Development Goals initiatives (such as Fair Trade) to reduce poverty, which is a driving force in human trafficking.
Although the issue of sexual slavery in Australia hit the headlines earlier this year, when the first people were charged and the first person was sentenced for keeping sex slaves in Australia, the issue of sexual slavery has been on the radar of Catholic religious and church networks for a long time.
There is even an annual prayer day on July 6, the feast of St Maria Goretti, initiated by the Catholic Women’s League to highlight and pray against the sexual violence and exploitation perpetrated against women and children, especially in regard to trafficking for prostitution. Most of the women who are trafficked here come from China, South Korea and Thailand.
Pauline is encouraged and inspired by the women working in this and related areas.
They include Jennifer Burn and Georgina Costello; Kathleen Maltzahn, director of Project Respect; Melbourne academic Liz Hoban, who runs Project Hope in Cambodia to help lift children out of poverty; Liberal MP Vicky Dunne, for bringing the issue to the attention of her party.
“So many of these wonderful women who are working in this area have been educated by the nuns and told they can do anything,” says Sr Pauline.
“We have to mentor these younger women especially as we are getting older.
“It’s a very exciting time, a new way to go. It is using our resources in a different way.”
Sr Pauline was born and raised in Queensland and believes she must have inherited a “really strong social justice gene” from her father.
“He had a strong social justice bent, honest to the nth degree and deeply spiritual,” she says.
“Then as a young woman in the Young Catholic Workers I wanted to change the world into a better place, and the YCW training was brilliant.”
Later, she studied at the Australian National University under “brilliant” teachers such as historian Manning Clark and poet AD Hope.
“It was a wonderful time to be there,” she said.
Sr Pauline joined the Good Sams in 1959.
“I’d been schooled by them only for a couple of years, but I liked the fact that they were Australian, and they were not diocesan,” she says. “Also the Good Samaritan parable is such a powerful parable.”
Sr Pauline believes the work she is currently doing is fitting for her congregation to be involved in, founded as it was by Archbishop Bede Polding to give women in vulnerable positions a helping hand.
A former high school teacher, Sr Pauline most recently worked with Queensland’s Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes’ Social Action Office. Her particular brief was the environment.
“I went to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002.
“It was a very interesting experience to be confronted with the enormity of the problem globally, plus the fact that people have been talking about global warming and climate change for perhaps 15 years and it’s only now that the politicians are starting to say that they’re willing to do something,” she says.
“Then there was the fact of going to South Africa itself and seeing the enormous poverty and enormous wealth that exists there side by side.”
A workshop on people trafficking will be held in Melbourne and Sydney in February. Email Sr Pauline at Pauline@brisnet.org.au for more information.
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