ITALY
Global Post
Valeria Fraschetti on Jul 21, 2015
CASERTA, Italy — Another woman had just knocked at the front door of Casa Ruth carrying a terrible, familiar burden. Fleeing the poverty of her country for the promise of a decent job, she ended up in Libya and was forced into sex work.
For two years the woman had been locked up in an apartment-turned-brothel with other Nigerian trafficking victims. One day Libyan militiamen entered and ransacked the house and 17 of them gang raped her, she said.
A few days later she was put on a boat to Italy with other African migrants hoping for a better life in Europe.
Italian authorities sent her to Casa Ruth, a shelter for migrant victims of sex trafficking in Caserta, just north of Naples. There she met Sister Rita Giaretta, a 58-year-old Ursuline nun who has been like a mother to many in this safe house that she started 20 years ago to provide the trafficking survivors with spiritual and legal help.
The young migrant woman is safe now, but devastated, and pregnant with a baby whose father is unknown.
“She keeps crying and saying that she does not want the baby,” said Sister Giaretta. “But two days ago she hugged me and told me, ‘Thank you, mum.’”
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