SLAVERY: A THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION by Mother Gemma Sampson

Gemma is a priest in Hartlepool and is involved in the fight against Modern Slavery working with the Clewer Initiative and Hope for Justice. 

This is an extract from Being Humans: A course exploring real life and real faith inspired by Humans. It is available to download as an eBook now.

God, when you said, ‘set the captives free’, you weren’t talking to me were you?

Several years ago, I was sitting having Sunday dinner with my priest friend. She was musing over her roast potatoes, and wondered aloud, ‘there must be that one thing you’re prepared to stand up in court for, go to prison for, even die for ...’. She surmised that everyone must have ‘their’ thing, that it was God-given, and that if we all acted on ‘our’ thing then the world would be transformed. And she continued to muse because she wasn’t sure what her thing was. But I knew what mine was: Modern Day Slavery; setting the captives free, literally.

Back in 2001, I accidentally and inconveniently found myself at a huge Christian gathering. It was accidental because I didn’t plan to be there, and it was inconvenient because I was not a real fan of God, or the Church at that time [2] ... and I really disliked Christians. So, there I was, surrounded by fifteen thousand Christians, and in desperate need of escape. I scoured the course programme to assess where there might be fewest people and came across a seminar called ‘Sex Trafficking and Young People’. At the time I was a youth worker, teaching sex education to young people, so I figured this might at least be useful. I didn’t know what trafficking was, but the other words formed most of my job title, so I decided to go along.

In the first few minutes of that seminar, in a dark auditorium, a woman who I later discovered was Ruth Dearnley (CEO of Stop the Traffik, [3] an outstanding charity working to end Modern Day Slavery worldwide) stood up and began to speak. Her opening sentence was: ‘Today, in the twenty-first century, men, women and children are being bought and sold’. I can’t tell you a single other thing that she said in the session that followed because, in that moment, hearing those words, my brain went into freefall and my life changed forever. Humans were being bought and sold? Today? But slavery is illegal!

I left that session bewildered, frightened, outraged and livid. There is no price that can be put on a human’s head. We are made in the image of God – we are bearers of the Imago Dei – and that makes us utterly priceless. I needed to do something, so I set about researching. I needed to know more.

In those first few weeks I learned that Human Trafficking is ‘the illegal movement of people, typically for the purposes of forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation’. [4] I discovered the average age of victims entering prostitution is 12 years old, and another person is bought and sold every thirty seconds; two every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Shockingly I found out the average price of a human being is just over £60, and that most people are first sold by a family member.

My research, passion and prayers led me to give up my job and spend 3 months living and working in the red-light and slum areas of Mumbai, Bangalore and Goa [5] in order to see first-hand what was happening. I met daughters who had been sold by their own fathers, women who had taken over the running of brothels once they became too sick to be paid for sex anymore, and one little girl who had been bought and sold twice before the age of 5 ... for the equivalent of £5 each time. As I returned home, it became easier to believe that this was ‘their’ problem, over ‘there’; that slaves look like ‘this’, not like me. This wasn’t something for the UK to worry about. I could continue to sponsor the child in India, continue to try and keep her in education, because I knew that was a good deterrent against slavery. I could continue to do all I could to battle poverty and patriarchy in ‘those’ parts of the world, because I had been told that these were two of the main root causes in trafficking people.

If only this were a localised problem.

I soon learned there is not one country, region, town, village even, that remains unaffected by Modern Day Slavery. This is a worldwide epidemic and it is out of control. In 2013, when I left for India, there were thought to be 21 million slaves worldwide. In 2018, that figure was thought to be just over 41 million. FORTY-ONE MILLION PEOPLE, currently enslaved, trapped, unable to escape, reduced to a commodity, someone else’s possession. Including in the UK.

And, unlike in the Channel 4 series Humans, you can’t spot a slave by their computer chip or glazed expressions. Victims of human trafficking and modern-day slavery6 are equally as likely to be male or female, adult or child, and of any ethnic origin.

THE UK STORY

In the UK in 2018, the Home Office estimated there were 13,000 slaves. Agencies and charities working on the frontline suggest that even if an extra nought was added to the end of that figure, it would still be a conservative estimate.

The three main forms of slavery, worldwide, are labour exploitation (predominantly males), sexual exploitation (predominantly females) and domestic servitude (both male and female). There are also cases where people are bought and sold for other reasons, including the harvesting of organs, but these cases are rarer. Slavery in the UK will change with trends, demand, and the sophistication of both human traffickers and policing techniques.

In 2019, Labour Exploitation in the UK most often takes the form of exploiting workers in hand car washes, cannabis farms, fruit farms, nail bars and work sites. Sexual Exploitation is found in pop-up brothels, massage parlours and escort agencies, as well as on-street prostitution and other forms of survival sex work and Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE). Domestic Servitude is more commonly found (but not exclusively) in affluent areas where people may ‘employ’ the services of a house servant.

THE JOURNEY OF THE SLAVE

The journey of each person trapped in slavery is different, of course, but there are some recurring similarities to notice.

• First, the person is recruited in some way, often lured by a promise; a promise of a well-paid job, a better life, a promise of a ‘streets paved with gold’ future, a promise of education, money, fame ... whatever it is it will be something worth taking a punt on. This lure may well come from someone they know; oftentimes it could be a family member, a ‘boyfriend’, or someone who has spent time, money and effort befriending the person. Alternatively, they may be recruited by another victim in the slavery ring; recruiting another slave to take their place comes with the promise of being granted their own freedom. This rarely happens; it is more likely to draw the ‘recruiter’ ever deeper into the slavery ring.

• In cases of trafficking, the person will be moved to another town, city or country where they will be passed (sold) to another person – someone they haven’t met and don’t know, and often they will learn nothing about this person. This movement may take place a few times; some people speak of being bought and sold, or handed over, three, four or more times before they reach their destination. They may be transported for miles, even across continents. [7]

• They may be given plane or train tickets and their passport will be taken from them. Each of these things contributes to a ‘debt’ that they are accused of accruing. They will then be forced to work to pay it off. Of course, this ‘debt’ continues to grow, rather than decrease, and there is no way they can ever work enough hours to pay it back.

• There is well-documented evidence of grooming, where those enslaved are convinced they cannot trust the authorities (with the threat of deportation or imprisonment), nor the police, nor even the general public. Survivors have spoken of ‘police’ visiting the brothel where they were forced to work, paying for sex and beating the women. These ‘police officers’ were imposters, but these actions corroborated the story that police were untrustworthy, or dangerous.

• Living conditions are poor. There is little food available, often no access to their own money or wages, control over who they can see, extreme isolation from society, cramped and substandard housing conditions (there are cases where slaves have been freed from 3-bedroom town houses, with 15 or more people sleeping in them), and the list goes on ...

• It is also worth noting, there may be reluctance to be released. The victim may appear to want to stay, at the point of rescue. They may defend the perpetrator of their enslavement. Reasons for this are many, and complex. Raids can be traumatic events; victims may have developed a rapport with the perpetrator (Stockholm Syndrome); the life they have as an owned person may be ‘better’ than that which they were living before being sold; their grooming and conditioning may have been so severe they are too frightened to risk leaving; they may have been a slave for longer than they were free – it is all they have known. [8]

HOW CAN WE SPOT THE SIGNS?

The more I learn about modern day slavery, the more I realise how little we all know. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to identifying, rescuing or rehabilitating those who have been enslaved. Every case is unique and different, and it becomes detrimental if we begin to believe we can know, by ticking boxes on a checklist, who is being exploited, but what we can and must do is add our voices to the solution, and place our own piece of the jigsaw into the puzzle.

The term often used to describe the crime of slavery is ‘hidden in plain sight’ and this continues to bear out as truth. If it is true that there isn’t a single country, city or town that isn’t impacted by modern day slavery, then we are each encountering people in the slavery-chain right where we are, regularly. Spotting the signs is tricky, because not every car wash worker or nail technician or domestic help will have been trafficked or be being held against their will; far from it. The problem is, once we gain a bit of information and knowledge on this subject, we begin spotting slaves all over the place, and that isn’t the case either. But there are some signs we might spot around us:

• Follow your intuition. As I hear more about the liberating of victims, the more it seems to be down to someone’s ‘hunch’ that something wasn’t right. Intuition is God-given. You don’t need to have every piece of the jigsaw; you can add your own concerns to the bigger picture.

• At hand carwashes and nail bars (and other workplaces) look out for people who appear to be working without suitable clothing or equipment. Check to see if they are being watched by an overseer, and if they are not freely able to converse with colleagues and customers. Is there evidence of people sleeping on site? Are the workers able to communicate in English? Do they appear to be clean, well-nourished, content?

• Brothels can crop up and disappear again quickly, but you might notice an increased number of visitors to a house in your street – predominantly male – at all times of the day and night [9]. Don’t expect to see women or girls leaving the house in order to confirm your suspicions. They might not be able to do so.

• Regular homes are being turned into cannabis farms and factories. You might notice heat coming from the house, and upstairs lights on for prolonged periods – even permanently. In time you might be able to smell cannabis as you pass the property.

• Some people are more vulnerable to being trafficked and/or exploited through slavery; young people who are in the care of the local authority, people with special needs, economic migrants who come to the UK in order to raise funds to send ‘home’, in the UK people from Albania and Vietnam (along with UK citizens) are more likely to be exploited in this way. Listen o their stories and believe what they are telling you.[10]

• In cases of domestic servitude, you may encounter a victim of slavery while they are out doing chores for their family. They may struggle to speak English and appear tired, drawn and unkempt.[11]

WHAT CAN WE DO?

It is so easy to feel defeated in the face of such a huge crime, like there is nothing we can do. It is also a temptation to think ‘if only people would do x, y or z it would all be sorted’. The truth is, we do not know how to end this terrible problem; if we knew what to do then slavery would be ended by now. If passion and commitment were sufficient to solve the problem, there wouldn’t be a single slave in the entire world. What we do know is that working together, and everyone doing their part, makes steps in the right direction towards setting many captives free. There are tangible things that can be done. Some of them are as follows:

• Make regular donations to fund the work of some of the exceptional charities working in the field.[12]

• Report any concerns to the Modern Slavery Helpline: 0800 012 1700.

• Download the Safe Car Wash app from the app store on your smart phone. It will take you through a series of simple questions when you are at a hand car wash. Depending on how you respond to the questions it may ask you to refer your concerns to the modern slavery helpline.[13]

• Make a commitment to become more informed about the issues. The press and social media are good places to start; read, learn, and act wherever possible.

• Be a ‘nosey neighbour’; notice who is coming and going in your street; notice when there is unusual behaviour happening.

• Do not be afraid to report – your little piece of the jigsaw might be crucial, and nobody will be cross if you report something that ends up being nothing.

• To help potential victims in other parts of the world you can consider ‘sponsoring’ a child through a charity.[14] Your sponsorship of them keeps them in education and, in developing countries, it is thought that being in education is a positive step towards ‘traffick-proofing’ a child.

• Become an advocate; you can raise awareness within your own social circles. Share what you are learning with others.

• Check your own supply chains; many of the things we buy, and places where we shop, use the labour of slaves. Educate yourself that you may live lightly; buy fair trade, check the anti-slavery statements of the main shops you use (every business should have one).

• Above all things, pray. Humans are made in the image of God and there is no price tag on that. The buying and selling of God’s children must break the heart of God. Pray for the day when every human might know their own worth, and the worth of others, for mutual respect, equality, safety, and for an end to modern day slavery and human trafficking.

And never rule out that God might be asking you to join the frontline in the fight for freedom, for every man, woman and child.

‘You can choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you didn’t know.’ William Wilberforce

‘Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice ... to let the oppressed go free ...? Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, ‘Here I a m’. Isaiah 58

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[2] Incidentally, God was tricksy and called me back to faith at that very conference, and called me to ordination not too long afterwards ...

[3] https://www.stopthetraffik.org .

[4] This is the definition used by the United Nations.

[5] According to the United Nations, in 2012, India was the epicentre of human trafficking and the most dangerous place in the world to be female.

[6] These terms are often used interchangeably. Human Trafficking is the term used for the buying, selling and moving of humans, from one place/country to another. Slavery involves buying and selling, but it might not be necessary to move the slave; they may remain near to where they are bought and sold.

[7] One survivor speaks of being walked from Russia to the UK over many weeks, with a variety of people, each handing him over to the next person, before he reached the cannabis farm where he was incarcerated; first in Manches-ter and then again in Bishop Auckland.

[8] In some cases, they may have been born into the slavery context. In India, for example, when a baby is born into a brothel, they become the property of the brothel owner at the age of 7. At this point, young boys will be sent into street beggary and young girls will be forced into sexual exploitation. If they are to be liberated, the mother needs to ‘buy them’ from the brothel owner.

[9] There have been well-documented cases of teenage girls being trapped as slaves of sexual exploitation and human trafficking through networks of takeaway restaurants and taxi firms. These girls were regularly seen at the same places, with the same older men, and nobody reported this.

[10] The London Metropolitan Police Force, in 2019, liberated a middle-aged woman with special needs from modern day slavery. She had been enslaved by a local family who lived a street away from her. They abused her financially, emotionally and physically. This continued for a decade before someone listened to her story and believed her.

[11] One victim of this form of slavery talks about being taken to church every Sunday by her keeper. She states that she tried to communicate to other church members ‘with her eyes’ that things were not okay for her, but nobody asked. It took ten years for the home office to make a raid on the home where she was trapped and rescue her. She had been bought and sold three times in that time.

[12] For more information on anti-slavery charities, check out the websites for Stop the Traffik, International Justice Mission (IJM), Hope for Justice, The Clewer Initiative and the work of the Salvation Army.

[13] It is hoped that a similar app for nail bars will be developed in the near future.

[14] Check out the work of Compassion for starters.