If Nuns Ruled the World by Jo Piazza

Author:Jo Piazza
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2014-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

5.

An Underground Railroad for Modern-Day Slaves

To say a person has been trafficked is to say they have

had their freedom taken away from them through force, fraud,

or coercion. They are treated like a commodity, not a person, and

their humanity is stripped away from them.

—Sister Joan Dawber

What had I done?

I covered my eyes with my hands and splayed them apart just an inch to see a nineteen-year-old Asian woman on the movie screen in front of me handcuffed and whipped by a dominatrix while her pimp looked on menacingly, smoking crystal meth out of a dirty pipe.

Sitting next to me was an unfailingly proper British nun in her sixties, my guest at this film premiere of a movie called Eden, which tells the story of a Korean American girl sold into sex slavery.

With each increasingly sexualized scene (a male sexual organ is bitten off in the middle of the film), I became more convinced that I’d made the same kind of mistake I had made when I watched Brokeback Mountain with my conservative father.

“We can leave,” I whispered during a particularly disturbing scene.

Sister Joan Dawber just shook her head a little.

“I may close my eyes if this gets to be too bad,” she replied, as calm as ever. I was the one shielding my face for most of the movie.

I was surprised when Sister Joan took me up on my offer to see Eden. I forwarded her the invite only moments after it arrived in my inbox, not really expecting a response, just thinking it could be the kind of thing she would be interested in, wanting to be friendly. I had actually forgotten that I had even sent it until she wrote back to me three days later:

Thanks for this very kind invitation, Jo. Yes, I am planning to join you, however, I have a meeting from 5:15–6:15 in Queens then I will drive into the city. Let me know where we should meet. Thanks.

She was waiting for me when I arrived and wrapped me in a warm hug in front of the Film Forum on a dimly lit block of West Houston Street in Manhattan, about thirteen miles from her home in Queens.

“I can’t believe I drove in here so late, look at me!” she said, spreading her arms wide and looking up at the slightly shabby neon-blue marquee. “So this is where the artsy people all hang out.” Sure enough, a group of black-turtle-necked, dark-rimmed-glasses-wearing hipsters elbowed past us through the glass doors, knocking Sister Joan into me. She just laughed and grabbed my arm as we walked into the theater.

Thirty minutes later, I was nervously checking that Sister Joan was all right. I didn’t need to be nervous. As the executive director of the LifeWay Network, running one of only three safe houses in New York City for women survivors of human trafficking, she hears stories worse than the ones portrayed in Eden every single day.

She has a dangerous job.

The location of the house is kept secret

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