ABSTRACT
Hema, 12, is a local Indian girl whose parents were lured through a small cash payment by a ‘nice’ city dweller into allowing her to join him in Bangalore to work and send back money to the village. This appeared the only approach to salvage the family from chronic poverty and desperation. Once in Bangalore, Hema and five other girls were locked up in a mansion without permission to leave. They were treated as slaves. She eventually escaped from her captors. Her story unfolded within a single jurisdiction, but similar experiences are reported in cross-border human trafficking (HT) that take place every day (Southern Arizona Against Slavery [SAAS] 2015). The story of Alina is even more somber. Originally from Armenia she was deceived by a phony boyfriend who promised her work in Greece. She eventually found herself in Dubai where her passport was confiscated and she was resold through a chain of pimps. Abused and dejected she was detained following a police raid and returned to Yerevan stigmatized (SAAS 2015). Alina’s story is akin to the experience of another Alina (Chloe Gratz Moretz) in The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington as Robert McCall. Their experiences are all too real as corroborated by scenes from another crime thriller Human Trafficking Movie (HTM 2010).
