This is a true story, but the name of the narrator and the titles of the programs she directed are not given so that her safety and anonymity are protected.
Even now, I am frightened when I remember what happened when I tried to fight the sex trade.
I am also sad because I loved my country, and I still care passionately about the children I was helping.
But now, I can only offer help from a distance. It was a trade-off I had to make to keep my family safe.
This is my sad but true story of what happened when I tried to fight the sex trade in Medellin, Colombia.
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The first threat
For more than two decades I worked for non-profit organizations. My degree is in Re-Educational Pedagogy, and my passion is for helping the drug-addicted, those who’ve been forced into prostitution, and the children who’ve been physically and sexually abused.
My belief is that I was helping my country and contributing to the welfare of future generations.
But that work didn’t come without its problems.
The first threat happened in October. Someone had called the office and asked for the director. The caller didn’t ask for me by name, but when I got on the phone, a lot of profanity was directed at me. I was warned.
“We will not let you continue to stick your nose in our business!” was one comment.
“Watch out!” was another.
While I was disturbed, I didn’t give it a lot of attention because the caller hadn’t asked for me by name. I hoped that it was some kind of bad joke.
The second threat
Two months later, late in December, I was in my car, stopped at a traffic light when a young man on a motorcycle approached. He hit the driver’s side window with a revolver, yelling at me to lower the window at the same time he was insulting me.
He kept shouting profanities at me. Then he issued threats.
“Don’t get into our business, idiot!”
He screamed, “Don’t get yourself killed” at me before he roared off on his motorcycle when the light changed.
The third threat
There were more than two months between the first threat and the second threat, but the third one came quickly.
The very next day after the motorcyclist had threatened me at the stoplight, another incident happened.
My husband at the time, my two teenaged boys, and I got into the car and left the house. My ex-husband was driving, and I was in the passenger seat when two armed men on motorcycles surrounded our car, one man on each side. My ex-husband thought that they wanted to rob us, so he began pulling off his rings, but the men yelled at him, threats laced with cuss words that I won’t repeat here.
“Get lost from here!”
“We’ve been watching you! Now that you know, don’t get yourself killed!”
While the man on the driver’s side was yelling at us, the motorcyclist on my side was hitting the window on the driver’s side with his gun, trying to break it.
I panicked. I leaned over and started honking the horn.
The man on my side yelled, “Get lost, Bitch!” and drove off.
It’s one thing to be threatened yourself, but now these threats were leveled at my entire family.
The role of the police
We immediately went to the police at the Immediate Care Center. They asked if we had been robbed, and we said no.
We could not, however, offer a description because the men had worn helmets and goggles. We had not seen the license plates on the motorcycles. Of course, the police told us that it was our right to file a complaint but that with no evidence, nothing could be done about it.
Worse, the police even said that targeting people and threatening them was a common occurrence – and nearly impossible to control – in the city.
In less than twenty-four hours, I’d been threatened twice, close to work and close to home. We decided that day, then and there, that we would go to Bogota.
We stayed in Bogota for a month figuring out what to do. While we were there, I contacted a relative who worked in the police force. He told me that I should investigate where the threats came from because they could very well become reality, endangering our lives.
Return to Medellín
We returned to Medellín in February. By now, we thought that things would have calmed down. I did go to the police station near my office, asking if I could have any kind of accompaniment or escort when I traveled to and from work since the people who had threatened us had not been caught. Of course, that was not possible.
For the next six months, we were very, very careful. We took extra precautions, including the fact that I didn’t drive my car for more than three months.
But our cautiousness didn’t help.
It wasn’t over yet.
The fourth threat
It was July when we began to believe that everything would be okay,
My oldest son and a friend were on their way home from an extracurricular event when they noticed someone watching them closely. The man talked on the phone while he watched them. The boys felt that something was wrong.
They speeded up.
Something was definitely wrong. The boys knew that their fear had been well-founded when the man approached them in a menacing manner.
“If you do not want us to beat you or your family up, tell your mother that she has to stop meddling in our affairs. She’s been warned already. Don’t bother with the police. Don’t be stupid because the police are involved with us already.”
A motorbike speeded up, the man who had threatened them jumped on, and the bike took off down the street.
What would you do to protect your children?
My son and his classmate were afraid. It was not a coincidence the men had approached my son. They obviously knew what route he took every day and had been watching for him.
Fear kept my son from attending classes for two weeks. That month, we decided to flee the country.
We didn’t, after all, have enough evidence to get protection or to find the people who were threatening us and making our lives miserable. By this point, I knew that if the police were unwilling to do anything about the child support my ex-husband owed, and with clear evidence substantiated in the prosecutor’s office, I could never get protection for a case with no names or evidence to back me up.
I sent my kids ahead of me to America while I stayed one more month to organize things and sell everything we owned for cash.
Can you fight the sex trade?
I know that because of the work I did, I was subject to vexations and cruelties from the men in the sex trade who didn’t like that I was taking “their girls” off the streets.
But it breaks my heart that my family was threatened and my life was put in danger. One of my good friends and co-worker at a convent that helped young women had been murdered years before. I knew it could happen to me, too.
For twenty years, I worked for non-profit organizations in my home country of Colombia, dedicated to fighting drug abuse, prostitution, and child sexual exploitation. I was a postulate and then a volunteer in a religious organization of sisters before I founded two foundations to help the children of Medellin by taking them out of the sex trade.
One of the happiest accomplishments of my life was helping to found what is Medellin’s premier foundation for helping these abused kids in all of Medellin, now known as Casa de Sueños.
But the fight was too much, and to protect my kids, I left Colombia.
Others remain in Medellin, bravely fighting the sex trade and trying to right the wrongs done to thousands of children every year.
The people at Casa de Sueños fight on, working to make the resources of this award-winning foundation in Medellin change the lives of children degraded by the sex trade.
You can fight, too.
No matter where you are.
Be brave.
Be compassionate.
Be generous.
Give to Casa de Sueños.
The woman who tells her story above chooses to remain anonymous to protect her family. She still supports Casa de Sueños in an advisory capacity from her unnamed location – somewhere in the United States – where her life is not threatened by sex traffickers because of her good works.