The complicated road to recovery for Indian women forced into sex work

William Brangham:

In India, as many as three million women are believed to be sex workers. They're often pushed into the trade because of extreme poverty or coercion.

We bring you the story tonight of one organization that's helped more than 32,000 of these women find a pathway out. While this group has earned international awards and philanthropic support, it has also raised complicated questions about how best to help these women, especially those who aren't asking to be rescued.

Fred de Sam Lazaro has our story. It's part of his series Agents For Change.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

The games, dancing and loud music mean it's Friday night at Prajwala and the staff are taking a moment for themselves.

Most of the women here share a deep bond over their complex, painful histories, beginning with the founder. She stands just 4'6'' tall, but hers is her commanding presence.

Sunitha Krishnan, Founder, Prajwala:

I was a high achiever and every parent thought, this is the model child.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

That was until age 15, when she was gang raped by eight men. Sunitha Krishnan says, far more painful than the physical trauma was the social indifference or innuendo that she endured.

Sunitha Krishnan:

I was loose. I was fallen.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

They were blaming you.

Sunitha Krishnan:

Everybody. Everybody. And I had loose morals. We want a victim to behave in a particular way. We want her to feel ashamed, guilty. I chose not to.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Instead, she says the ordeal helped her focus as an aspiring social worker on the fight against what she calls an age-old culture of misogyny, manifest in sexual assaults and a thriving prostitution industry.

This is Prajwala's base camp.

Thirty years ago, she founded the organization called Prajwala, or Eternal Flame, to shelter women removed in police raids from brothels and to police the police, ensuring that raids are actually conducted and that the women, widely marginalized in India, are treated with respect.

Since then, thousands have come through Prajwala's various programs. As I talked to groups of survivors around the campus, almost everyone's story began with dire poverty that left them vulnerable to an extensive trafficking mafia.

Lakshmi Priya, Trafficking Survivor (through interpreter):

My husband's sister brought me to Hyderabad and sold me into the red light area.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Lakshmi Priya fell victim into a scam marriage scheme.

Lakshmi Priya (through interpreter):

They took my daughter away from me and, for the sake of her safety, I used to do whatever they forced me to do. If I didn't, they would beat me very harshly.

Nazia, Trafficking Survivor (through interpreter):

My father died in a road accident and I was left with a mother and a small brother.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Nazia became her family's breadwinner as a teenager and was convinced by a trafficker that there was better paid work in Hyderabad. It turned out to be in the sex trade.

Nazia (through interpreter):

Sometimes I used to attend 20 customers per day. They would make us drink and smoke. And if we didn't do the work, they would beat us very harshly.

Siraj, Trafficking Survivor (through interpreter):

I wanted to die instead of living this kind of life.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Siraj was promised training and a tailoring job 1,000 miles from her home in the capital, Delhi. She found herself in a brothel, and she found a razor blade.

Siraj (through interpreter):

After I cut my hand a lot of blood came out and I became unconscious. I don't know what happened later.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

She was picked up hours later by police and eventually placed in this shelter.

Siraj (through interpreter):

Today, she's trained and employed by Prajwala as a bookbinder earning a decent wage.

Sunitha Krishnan:

This is a product that we are doing.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Bookbinding is one of several training initiatives that double up as revenue-generating businesses, training survivors in skills ranging from tailoring to welding to carpentry and paying them and their teachers' salaries.

Sunitha Krishnan:

When they go to construction sites, everybody, like, stands back, oh, my God, women welders, we have never seen them. So coming from a perception which is indoctrinated into them in the brothel, that you go out, everybody is going to throw you out, nobody is going to accept you, suddenly, when you get that sense of respect.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

But the journey to achieving the success is arduous. It can take years to overcome trauma and learn new skills, and not everyone agrees it's the right approach to dealing with the sex industry.

Some human rights advocates and people who work in the sex industry take issue with what they call the raid-and-rescue approach that brings women to Prajwala's shelters. Most of these women, they say, are not actually trafficked and go into the business voluntarily, albeit because their poverty and illiteracy give them few other options.

Nonetheless, they say, these women are in the business voluntarily and don't want to be rescued.

Vibhuti Ramachandran, University of California, Irvine: Why is someone doing domestic work? Why is someone doing factory work? It's not necessarily their number one choice of what they wanted to do. It's within the constraints of their education and their economic status.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Vibhuti Ramachandran is an anthropologist at the University of California, Irvine.

Vibhuti Ramachandran:

So why are we exceptionalizing the sex industry is a question worth asking, right? And then whose morality is shaping that?

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Prostitution is technically a legal profession in India, but the law criminalizes related activities like soliciting or operating a brothel.

Brothel raids are the most common law enforcement tactic, removing women who are automatically presumed to be trafficking victims and placing them in protective shelters for rehabilitation, to which they're entitled by law.

Ramachandran says the approach has been heavily influenced by U.S. policy in recent decades.

Vibhuti Ramachandran:

With the Bush administration in the early 2000s, where there was a lot of importance given to anti-trafficking and there was money associated with it.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

The result, she and others say, is a patchwork of shoddy enforcement, many substandard shelters and a confiscation of these women's most viable way to earn a living.

Vibhuti Ramachandran:

There's a lot of emphasis on training and reforming these women, right? But a lot of them say, we don't have time for that. We can't afford to be learning.

Sunitha Krishnan:

We have books.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Sunitha Krishnan says the solution is to improve the quality of shelters and rehab programs. Prajwala receives high marks for its vocational training, but it too has faced protests from women seeking to leave its fortified shelters, including escape attempts and at least one woman who died from suicide.

Getting released from a shelter often involves tedious procedures through a notoriously slow court system. And rehabilitation is no walk in the park, says Krishnan.

Sunitha Krishnan:

From trauma care to support in medical care, de-addiction, detoxification, all this takes time.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

So it's not surprising, she says, that women want to escape from shelters and up to 15 percent of them do return to sex work.

Sunitha Krishnan:

The large number of them have gone back because of other compulsions, like a Stockholm syndrome or a trauma bond that they have developed with an abuser.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

When it comes to sex work, she calls herself steadfastly abolitionist.

Sex work, in your mind, cannot be a profession like most other professions.

Sunitha Krishnan:

I don't believe so. I believe it is the oldest form of patriarchal legitimization of commodifying a woman's body as a sexual object.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Education is key to bringing fundamental change to give young people options, Krishnan says. She took me to a mainstreaming program Prajwala runs in distressed neighborhoods to help children who are not in school through tutoring or school readiness programs.

This, it is hoped, would mean a more straightforward vocational journey for the next generation than that of the women that Prajwala shelters and their children. Lakshmi Priya is reunited with her daughter, who is now in her first year of law school.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Fred de Sam Lazaro in Hyderabad, India.