“Project Together” helps young women from orphanages, single mothers, and victims of domestic violence—women that society often rejects.
By Laura Sheahen
“Children from the orphanages, they’re easy to get. They need money to smoke or because they want to buy a cookie.” Driving through the hill country of central Romania, Lucia Ionescu of Caritas Bucharest is talking about human trafficking. “It’s easy to approach them. Many abandoned children are caught up in trafficking.”
She’s travelling to visit Father Petru Paulet, a priest in a town that is crawling with traffickers—people who buy and sell other human beings into forced labour, prostitution, or beggary. Fr. Petru and his Caritas colleagues are on the front lines of the war against modern-day slavery.
The young people most at risk are those who have grown up in state-run orphanages. Most of the time, the children are not actually orphans. Their parents are simply to poor, too young themselves, or too deep into alcoholism to take care of their children.
“Those orphanages are like a jungle,” says Lucia Soci of Caritas. “Outwardly things seem OK—there’s food, you have a place to sleep, hot water, TV. But you have no responsibilities. You don’t learn basic life skills.”
Dora* was beaten by teachers at her orphanage and raped when she was eight years old. “When I left, they gave me my ID card and clothes and said ‘go.’” With no family to turn to and no way to earn a living, the only place to go was the street, where Dora lived for years.
Eventually someone noticed her. “A man found me on the street and told me he could get me a job in Spain,” she says. Over the next few days, she started to get a bad feeling about the transaction, but the man said he’d already spent too much processing her travel documents for her to back out. “We went by bus to Madrid. It took three days,” says Dora. “I told him I didn’t want to go, but he took out a knife.”
Dora tried to go to the police in Madrid, but didn’t speak the language. She managed to escape by contacting someone she’d met on the bus. Much later, she was able to get back to Romania. She was pregnant.
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The women are now “independent, they have the skills, can make their own lives,” says Fr. Petru. “Those who are married have good, happy, strong families. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Credit: Sheahen/Caritas |
Dora now has a job, and a place to live with her son, because of a programme that Fr. Petru pioneered. “Project Together” helps young women from orphanages, single mothers, and victims of domestic violence—women that society often rejects. “Employers are reluctant to hire them,” says Lucia Soci, so Father Petru and the Caritas team bought spaces for small businesses. They developed a cafe, a tailoring workshop, a dairy, and a bakery. They provided vocational training in fields like typing, sewing, and hairdressing. They found apartments for the women and, for those with kids, made sure their children were in a good school.
The single young women live in group apartments and have a resident advisor. “We were really wild,” laughs Florentina, 35. She grew up in one of the better orphanages and wasn’t mistreated, but still had few job options when she left. At the Caritas apartment, “We’d sneak out to a disco and put pillows under the covers so it looked like someone was there.”
“They had to tell us things like, ‘Don’t eat all the food at once,’” she continues. “In the orphanage, the food portions were small. So if you saw food, we’d eat it quickly.”
“If Father Petru hadn’t pushed us, I don’t know what would have happened,” Florentina says. “We upset him many times, but he never gave up on us.” Eventually, Florentina rose through the ranks at the church-sponsored cafe. She received a loan from the programme and got her own apartment, paying back the loan on time.
Fr. Petru watches out for children so that an orphanage doesn’t become an option. Especially in rural areas, many parents to go abroad for work because Romania’s economy is so poor. In one case, Fr. Petru discovered that four girls were home alone with their alcoholic father, who drank up the money his wife was sending from her job in Italy. When the little girls came to Fr. Petru asking for food, he knew something was wrong. He and a Caritas staffer went to the family’s home.
“The girls’ father threatened Fr. Petru and Stefano with a knife,” remembers Lucia Soci. “Stefano held the man while Fr. Petru got the girls out,” including a baby that had been severely neglected. Caritas called the mother in Italy—she came back—and Caritas arranged for an apartment where the family can stay safely.
The Caritas projects stop the cycle of abused, desperate women giving up their own children to orphanages—or being exploited by traffickers. “If not for this programme, women might abandon their kids or accept a compromising situation with a man,” says Lucia Soci.
But even working at the Caritas-sponsored jobs, they are still surrounded by criminals. “Some people here are well-known as traffickers,” says Fr. Petru. “They went to jail and now they’re back.”
“We knew those people. We’d say ‘Hello’ when we met and that’s all,” says Florentina. “It was dangerous to go to the police. If you said something and the traffickers saw you alone, they might beat you or rape you. I’d be afraid for my life and my safety.”
“The traffickers are ‘normal’ during the day, they throw expensive parties,” says Fr. Petru. “They were talking to a girl who was working here in our cafe. I said, ‘You’re not touching these girls. Please leave.’”
The traffickers lurk around the high school and anywhere else that vulnerable people might be. “Two girls were forced into prostitution. They were around 19,” says Florentina, remembering what happened around the time when she herself left the orphanage. “They were offered jobs, maybe cleaning houses, but it was a lie.”
“If this programme didn’t exist, I don’t know. Maybe I would have done the same thing,” Florentina says. “Father Petru has really helped us. I have my own apartment, a job, a fiancé. I’m proud of my apartment...and that I’ve become independent.”
Dora, whose first two children were taken from her by social services when she lived on the street, is particularly grateful that her small son is with her in their Caritas-subsidized apartment. “If I didn’t have Fr. Petru and Caritas, they might have taken my child,” she says. “No matter how tired or upset I am, when I see my son, I forget. He’s helped me a lot.”
The women are now “independent, they have the skills, can make their own lives,” says Fr. Petru. “Those who are married have good, happy, strong families. That’s the ultimate goal.”
The traffickers don’t give up and neither does Fr. Petru. As the priest continues his difficult—and sometimes dangerous—work, certain Bible verses inspire him: “’Love compels us,’” he smiles. “And... ‘Be not afraid.’”
*Names have been changed
