A woman trafficked into Ireland from Nigeria when she was 15
has revealed how homelessness campaigner Sr Stan saved her life. Chino Okeke
was forced into a job as an unpaid domestic worker and was regularly beaten and
abused. Rescued by social services, she ended up in a foster home but at 18 she
was out on the street with nowhere to go. She tried to take her own life, which
is when she met Sr Stan. The nun found her a home and helped to arrange a
university education and an Irish citizenship application. "Sr Stan saved
my life. Today I am a career woman, smart, with a good job and happy and that
would not have been possible if I did not meet Sr Stan. She started that
journey for me," said Ms Okeke.
Speaking on a new RTÉ documentary on Sr Stan's life, Ms
Okeke said: "I call her my grandma. I love her so much.
"She's the reason why I'm here today. She's my guardian
angel. She was there for me when I literally had no one.
"She sees you. The way you are treated by society you
feel you do not deserve love you do not deserve anything. She was the first
person that saw me.
"That hope she gave me made everything ok. She sees
people and sees them as human. She is everything to me."
Sr Stan (80), who is in remission from cancer, said she did
a lot of work with girls and women who were trafficked for sexual exploitation.
She tells the documentary of her horror at being tarnished
by child abuse accusations made against her religious order. She said she knew
"absolutely nothing" about child abuse in St Joseph's residential
home in Kilkenny where she worked in the 1970s.
The Ryan Report revealed two lay workers at St Joseph's had
sexually and physically abused children. It criticised the owners of St
Joseph's, the Sisters of Charity, for failing to learn anything from a
hushed-up case in 1954.
"I can understand why people find it hard to understand
how we didn't know, how I didn't know," said Sr Stan.
"But I suppose now, the more we hear about it, and the
more we realise what an awful, dark hidden secret it is and how frightened the
children are and the gap that is between the children and the people caring for
them, there is much more awareness of that now."
'Being Stan: A Life in Focus' is on RTÉ One on Thursday at
10.15pm.
ADDITIONAL
TEXT:
IRELAND IS BEING used as a destination for child sex slaves, according to
the EU’s policing agency. A new report by Europol
shows that international criminal groups, particularly from Nigeria, are using
established trafficking networks and the cover afforded by the migrant crisis
to smuggle minors into northern European countries like Ireland for sale
into the sex trade and other criminal enterprises.
The report
details the testimony involved in more than 600 cases concerning the
trafficking of underage victims within EU member states between 2015 and 2017. https://www.europol.europa.eu/
It details
the ‘particularly harmful’ EU crime networks of ‘large family clans’ which
traffic children for the purposes of begging, criminality and sexual
exploitation, with those clans operating in multiple countries at any one time
and rotating their victims on a regular basis.
All told,
268 cases of trafficking with minor victims involved for the purposes of
exploitation were documented, with 985 victims identified and 3,642 suspects
detailed. 34 of those cases involved minor victims exclusively.
In the case
of children, the role of the family is particularly stark, with people engaging
in the trafficking and exploitation of their own children.
“Exploited
children in vulnerable situations deserve to be protected more than anyone
else,” said Catherine De Bolle, executive director of Europol in light of the
report’s publication.
“Together
with EU member states, we will build on the finding of this report to better
support future investigative actions at both national and EU-level against
trafficking of the weakest social category of all – vulnerable children,” she
said.
The majority
of the cases reported to Europol involved Nigerian gangs trafficking young
girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation, while female suspects play a far
greater role in the trafficking of children into the EU than in the case of
adult victims.
Other
countries detailed for their involvement include the organised crime gangs of
Vietnam and Albanian-speaking networks.
In the case
of the Nigerian gangs, southern EU countries such as Italy and Spain are used
as the main entry port for the trafficked children, who are then shuttled
between networks to destination points in countries like Ireland where they are
forced into prostitution.
Other
countries where victims have been located include Austria, Belgium, France,
Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the UK.
ENDS:
ALSO READ: https://crimenewsjournal.blogspot.com/
(YOUR HELPLINE LINKS): https://www.drugfreeworld.org/
& www.drugs.ie
& www.drugscope.org.uk
& www.spunout.org
& www.childline.org.uk/
& www.youngminds.org.uk/
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