FRED DE SAM LAZARO: She's stands barely taller than these children, but to them Dr. Sunitha Krishnan is a towering figure -- big sister, mother, and school principal rolled into one. Their faces betray few outward signs of the trauma these children have endured. Every child at this transition center is HIV positive. They weren't born that way. They were infected as a result of rape or incest.
Dr. SUNITHA KRISHNAN (Co-founder, Prajwala): I don't know what their future is. I know what their present would be, and for me it's one day at a time right now. And my effort is to see that their smiles are restored everyday, and I can sustain their smiles.
DE SAM LAZARO: But beneath her smile lies a deep anger that propels Krishnan. It began when, as a teenage social activist, she was gang-raped.
Dr. KRISHNAN: The rape per se was not so much of an issue for me. I don't know, for some reason I was never traumatized by that, the fact that I was raped. But what happened after that made me think [about] the way my family treated me, the way the world treated me, the way people around me treated me. The sense that thousands and millions of children and young people are being sexually violated and that there's this huge silence about it around me angers me. This huge normalization of that angers me.
DE SAM LAZARO: Krishnan began working to combat sexual violence in what she says is its most pervasive form -- prostitution. After getting a doctorate in social work, she and a Catholic brother, who died in 2005, founded Prajwala, which means "eternal flame." It is dedicated to removing -- she says rescuing -- women from brothels. It begins with helping their children. In 1995 she started a school with five children. Today, aside from this boarding school for HIV positive kids, Prajwala runs 17 schools across the city of Hyderabad with 5,000 children.
Dr. KRISHNAN: If this facility was not here today perhaps most of the girl children would be inducted into prostitution.
DE SAM LAZARO (to Dr. Krishnan): Even at this age?
Dr. KRISHNAN: I would say eight or nine. The older children that you saw on the other floor are children who would have been easily procured for prostitution and most of the boys, right from the age of six or seven perhaps, would be pimping for their mothers.
DE SAM LAZARO: She says about two million people are trafficked each year within India or from neighboring countries. Most are inducted into the sex trade at age 10 or even earlier, usually destined for big cities and tourist areas. Prajwala has developed a network of informants in the sex industry to help conduct what have become trademark brothel raids. Most of the young women rescued are already veterans of the trade. Many are actually very reticent.
Dr. KRISHNAN: There's so much desensitization that has happened, so much normalization of exploitation that has happened, so much internalization of trauma that has happened. Most of the time, you know, they develop some very close attachments, and they will any day go back. Some of them would any day go back to their pimps or procurer than rather be with us.
DE SAM LAZARO: In fact many do go back to a life that's become normal, a familiar routine. But Prajwala has managed to coax 1,500 women out of prostitution. Peer counselors like 20-year-old Malini play a critical role.
MALINI (Peer Counselor, Prajwala, through translator): When we get the girls, they cry a lot. I ask why, and I tell them my own story, that this is what happened to me and I don't want the same to happen to you.
DE SAM LAZARO: Malani's story is typical. There was abuse, poverty, and despair in her home. A seemingly helpful adult friend, often it's a relative, offered the young daughter work in the big city. Instead, says Malini, she was sold into a brothel. The price the brothel paid for her then became the price she would have to pay for her freedom, paid from her brothel earnings. The accounting is elastic and entirely dictated by pimps or madams, as she found out months into her servitude.
MALINI (through translator): One day they told me, "There's a small balance, and when you pay it off you'll be free to go." I asked how much, and they said 200,000 rupees. I got frightened. I said, "Why 200,000? I've been here so many months, and you've earned so much money from me." They just beat me, so I ran away.
DE SAM LAZARO: But running to the police in a city she didn't know, she encountered only more violence.
MALINI: When we asked the police, "Why are you hitting us?" they said "because you do this immoral work." And I said, "Well, why are you catching us? You should go after our house madams, not us." But they just beat us some more.
DE SAM LAZARO: Official corruption has decreased in recent years. Prajwala's rescue raids are now conducted with the police. At least part of this is due to pressure from Washington. The U.S. Justice Department publishes an annual T.I.P. or Trafficking in Persons report. Countries that show no improvement in cracking down run the risk of some trade sanctions.
Dr. KRISHNAN: At one level it irritates me to no end that my country would require somebody else from outside to tell them that this is a problem. That's not the right way to go about it.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN (through translator, lecturing to group of children): You're not old yet, and at your age girls should remember a few important things: the way you dress, your behavior. How should that be? It should be acceptable to others. For example, the way you walk.
DE SAM LAZARO: Young women like 19-year-old Abbas Bee are trained in traditional life skills and quite untraditional occupational ones. The goal is to find good-paying jobs, jobs rarely held by women in India. Prajwala itself runs a printing and metal workshop and that helps pay for its work, along with grants from UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services, and others.
Dr. KRISHNAN: At any given point of time there is somebody pregnant, somebody delivering or somebody -- something's happening. So from birth to death, birth to death, we are the only linkage.
