Women and Children First

By: Mary E. Hunt, PhD

Human trafficking is a mega-billion dollar global industry unregulated by any country or international body. It is a criminal activity ignored and/or tolerated with devastating consequences for the person involved, most of whom are women and children.

Trafficking ranks just behind drug and arms trading as the most lucrative forms of commerce. Religiously informed social justice groups need to add this unspeakable activity to our agendas and bring the resources of our religious traditions to the task of eradicating it. I only wonder why it has taken some of us this long to focus our attention on an all too common phenomenon.

It is no surprise that the vast majority of trafficked persons are women and children. Nor is it any shock that most of those who do the trafficking are men. That is simply the power configuration of patriarchy/kyriarchy with trafficking fitting the paradigm exactly, including racial/ethnic minorities being disproportionately represented. As such, trafficking is simply another way that women and children are pawns in an out-of- balance world. No wonder we do not even notice.

The United Nations estimates that between 700,000 to 4 million women (most between ages 18 and 24) and children are involved in trafficking. Their stories vary slightly but the outline is the same. They are moved around like chess pieces for prostitution, illegal labor, and drug-related activities. Most of them experience physical and/or sexual violence. Their vulnerability in the larger context of economic and sexual inequality leaves them ripe for this kind of exploitation.

Recruiters are usually strangers who make a persuasive case to women in need. But a large percentage of those who engage women in trafficking are actually relatives or friends of the family. One study of trafficking done in 2007 indicated that only one person was actually convicted for every 800 people who were trafficked. A logical conclusion is that trafficking is morally and legally trivial in an unjust world.

Trafficking works in such perfect synch with the larger system that most of us in the privileged West can ignore it without blinking because it never passes our screens. Yet it is a dimension of every war, flood, famine, hurricane, and earthquake when people are uprooted without regard for their safety or well-being. Unscrupulous agents take advantage of their situations, prey upon those who are young and vulnerable, and dupe those who seek to better their lots. The moral repugnance of trafficking is only outdone by its criminality.

A major reason why women are ‘willing’ to move from their country of origin to another country is the lure of a safer, more fruitful life for themselves and their children. Trafficking is a ‘natural’ part of the movement of peoples we call migration. In fact, many women respond to bogus offers of employment and help with immigration when in fact they are really assenting to their own servitude.

They find on the other end that they have been bound into prostitution, are raped and sometimes tortured by the same men they had trusted to help move their families to places where they were told there is work.

Rather than becoming legally employed as waitresses or domestic workers, these women end up in prostitution, where they face the added burdens of unwanted pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, and a negative social stigma.

Whether in Benin or Berlin, Minneapolis or Mumbai, the patterns are remarkably common.

Trafficked women are used to entice other women into the process. They are used as examples of people who have ‘made it’ in another country, can send money home, or seem to be living a more comfortable life. But the price they pay is higher than what their friends and family can see from afar. It is a debt their families will pay for generations to come.

Stories of trafficked women and children are hard to read, harder still to incorporate into an analysis of how to rid the world of this hideous dynamic.

Societies that dishonor women by keeping girls from education, by limiting reproductive choices (especially contraception and safe abortion), or by prohibiting women from certain jobs because of their gender should not be surprised when women are trafficked.

Poverty is a powerful motivator for parents who wish a better life for their children. When parents entrust their children to friends and relatives who claim they will enhance their children’s chances, parents unwillingly and unwittingly risk their children falling into the hands of traffickers.

The scope and ubiquity of the problem confound: from the smallest towns in Africa to the biggest cities of Europe, from the teeming streets of Asian capitals to the tranquil towns of the American Midwest.

Obviously trafficking has tacit support from some law enforcement officials, border patrols agents in many places, and perhaps even from corrupt governments. It is a product of organized crime and a by-product of gang activities. Yet the result is always the same —women and children harmed.

I stretch to find resources equal to the enormity of the problem. One promising font of insight and advocacy is a new anthology edited by MacArthur Award-winning historian Bernadette J. Brooten, “Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies.”

In her anthology, Dr. Brooten and her collaborators trace the history of slavery in order to show the vestigial ways in which it is still very much a part of our world. They demonstrate that the sacred texts of major religious traditions like Judaism, Islam, and Christianity have not been unequivocal in their condemnation of slavery. For example, Jesus never outlawed it. The gestalt of this project is to lay bare the scaffolding of slavery and provide tools for eradicating it.

Human trafficking is a close cousin of slavery. Though Dr. Brooten and her marvelous array of scholars, activists, and artists do not take it on directly, there is much to learn from, and their approach can be useful in the struggles to outlaw trafficking.

First, they take a deep look at the history and contours of slavery. This needs to be done in order to draw an accurate map of where and how women and children are moved about, in what regions and countries people are most at risk.

Second, they bring a multi-disciplinary approach to the topic including everything from religion to hip-hop music, from law and anthology to autobiographical accounts of slavery. Finally, they extrapolated from the historical data on slavery to contemporary ways in which women are mistreated, ways in which sexual play can mimic slavery. The same method would be helpful on trafficking. First- person accounts provide reality to what can remain an abstraction. A good play, even a musical that would educate audiences, remains to be written on trafficking. Some artistic ways of elucidating the painful reality might invite more outrage a la “The Vagina Monologues.”

A long look at human trafficking will reveal the ways in which it has been considered normal, the extent to which many women have no say in their whereabouts, no choice in their work, no control over how their children will be used/abused. In addition, legal studies and a review of government policies can reveal the many loopholes that allow trafficking to continue unchecked.

Women and children used to come first in the social order because of their perceived vulnerability. Regrettably, women’s movements around the world in recent decades did not bring an end to that vulnerability. Indeed, with increased distance between the moneyed and the rest of us, I daresay women and children are at more of a risk than ever.

With trafficking of women and children now a big business, eradicating it has to become a priority agenda item for all who seek justice, lest trafficking be considered “too big to fail.”

Carol Scinto: One of a Kind

by Mary E. Hunt

December 16, 2011

On the occasion of what would have been her 86^th Birthday

Joe, Cathy, Blaise, Mia, and Tup, family and friends—good morning, and thank you for the rich remembrances already shared. My sympathy to each and all of you on the loss of Carol Blythe Murdock Scinto, one of a kind.

Several years ago, Carol asked me to speak at her memorial service. My response was an immediate ‘yes,’ qualified only by the fact that I was not prepared to do it any time soon. She honored her part of that bargain by living well beyond what medical science might have indicated—“What do they know,” she was heard to utter more than once—so I will honor mine. It is not easy to speak publicly about a person one loves as dearly as I loved my friend Carol. Nonetheless, knowing that you loved her as well makes it easier for all of us to accept her death and give abundant thanks for her many wonderful years among us.

We at WATER, the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual in Silver Spring, MD, think of Carol as our own because she was. In the 1980s, after some innings with the local Presbyterian church, an astute there, then Margee Adams, now Margee Iddings, suggested that Carol might want to explore a new place in town called WATER. It was run by women, Margee said, and featured programs and publications that Carol might find more compatible with her feminist theo-politics than the biblical fare offered in the congregation. Carol, ever one to explore and inquire, came by for a look.

It was love at first sight all around. Here was a smart woman whose brain and heart were deeply connected, a literate liberal with progressive tendencies, an editor looking for a manuscript, a volunteer in search of a place to invest her considerable talent. We at WATER were a fledgling feminist organization. We used to joke about changing our name to WINE: Women in Need of Everything. Then Carol came along as the answer to our prayers. She was one of a kind.

Year in and year out—at least 16 by my reckoning—Carol edited the WATERwheel, our newsletter, to a fare thee well. Once an innocent reader complained that, for the first time, she saw typos in our work—what was happening? I hastened to report that Carol and Joe were in New Zealand. Needless to say, it never happened on Carol’s watch. She was the deadline enforcer and even contributed some of her original artwork to WATER’s projects.

Carol busied herself with ordering copies of books we might consider for review. Publishers realized that ours was, as they call, a “hot list” in the field—our readers buy and read books—so they are always anxious to get books into our hands. Carol handled the whole enterprise. In so doing, she built what is now a 5000+-volume resource center in our modest office. We named it the Carol Blythe Murdock Scinto Library. With Cathy’s good suggestions, we even have it online where people all over the world can find an obscure title.

At the lunch table at WATER and over countless cups of tea that a proper Mrs. Scinto taught us to enjoy, we learned a great deal from and about Carol. As the biography read earlier makes clear, she came from the far west, went to college, and then to work as a journalist. Her time in England was perhaps the most formative of all—satisfying her yen for travel, her keen interest in the world, and indulging her passion for good literature. If the Queen had been astute, she would have invited Carol for tea.

Anyone who knew Carol even casually came to know the whole family. There were suitors along the way, but there was only one love in her life, an Italian Catholic guy from New York. By the time his mother and aunts got an up-close look at this WASP girl from the West Coast, what they thought was immaterial. Joe and Carol, AKA Loopy and Spud, began a partnership that endures well beyond death.

You, the daughters Scinto, were the pride of her life—each of you in your unique way. I’ve often thought that she should have written the screenplay for “The Lives and Loves of the Sisters Scinto”! She would have cast each of you in a delightful light—never forgetting the challenges you offered her, but always emphasizing your goodness. She loved you each, and your families, more than life itself.

Carol did not do Middle America very well. While she was as supportive a parent as ever lived, she was not one to let doctors, teachers, much less politicians get away with mediocrity. Those tough years of the 70s and 80s were challenging for her, which is why finding WATER must have seemed like an oasis of sorts.

Carol Scinto was smart beyond measure. Recall that perhaps apocryphal story of the Encyclopedia Britannica salesperson arriving at the door of her family home to sell a set. One of Carol’s brothers is alleged to have asked, “Why would we need an encyclopedia? We have Carol.” I have come to think of Carol Scinto as what we did before we Googled. We simply asked Carol. Ninety-nine times out of 100 she was correct, a comma here or a comma there. Those in her book club will agree that she was one of a kind.

She loved to travel. So when WATER organized a trip to Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, Carol was among the first to sign up. It was a rigorous adventure visiting poor women and learning about our sister groups there. But Carol was stalwart and enthusiastic to the end because she could see the value of such intercultural sharing, even if the schedule was exhausting.

Travel went in two directions. In subsequent years, Cristina Grela from Uruguay sent her daughter Marianna to live in Rockville for a while. Sandra Duarte from Brasil was a Scinto surrogate daughter when she wrote her dissertation at WATER. Carol also befriended WATER’s visiting scholar Solveig Boasdottir and, later, her husband Baldur Baldurson who visited Rockville. Those two friends recently met the Scintos for a visit in New Jersey. Mrs. Scinto edited both of their doctoral dissertations, Solveig’s on feminist theology and violence, and Baldur’s on some new ideas in dermatology. Her scope was amazing.

Carol met Gwen Benjamin from Australia through WATER. Thelma and Louise had nothing on them. When Carol and Joe were Down Under, they teamed up with Gwen and her late husband Marcus in what had to be one of the world’s most enjoyable foursomes. Stories of their travel adventures are the stuff of legend—someone got locked in a hotel bathroom and had to be rescued by a bellhop if I recall correctly! Their friendship gave new luster to our Alliance.

Carol was as committed to justice as she was smart. Before we knew her, she chained herself to the White House fence with colleagues who were seeking the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Memo to Amanda and your generation: the ERA remains to be ratified. Later she joined me in a ‘pumps and pearls’ arrest in front of the Vatican Embassy to draw attention to the Roman Catholic Church’s discrimination against women. Pope John Paul II was in this country for a visit. To get his attention, a dozen of us unfurled a banner that read “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” before we were hauled off in the paddy wagon for a cameo appearance in the DC court system. Charges were dropped because it was indeed legal to protest that close to an embassy. Carol was justifiably proud of her rap sheet.

When their mothers died, Joe and Carol gave WATER a gift to start “The Mothers’ Fund” in 1992. The founding papers read: “This fund, initiated with a gift to WATER from Joseph and Carol Murdock Scinto in honor of their mothers, is intended to provide small but strategically focused grants to women seeking, individually or through organizations, to effect social change by combatting want, ignorance, and injustice experienced in their homes and communities.” Over the past two decades, many women have received help to go to a conference, to buy books, to replace a computer damaged in the Chilean earthquake, to finish a dissertation—always small grants in the spirit of the widow’s mite but enough to know that someone cared that they succeed. Carol did. One woman recipient wrote last year: “I learned from you folks in the Mothers’ Fund to be attentive to helping other women.” Indeed that was part of Carol’s legacy.

In recent years, and especially after her devastating diagnosis, Carol was slowed but never stopped. She continued to grace the office on occasion, always eager to meet the new interns and keep up with our efforts. She delighted in the fact that we never capitulated to religious patriarchy because she didn’t either. She was a woman strong of spirit but honest enough to say she didn’t believe most religious tenets. I admired her and agreed with her.

Carol died as she lived—on her own terms, surrounded by her family members who knew her wishes to die peacefully and without a lot of medical intervention. So it was, and she showed a grace and strength even then which her family matched.

We don’t expect to find another Carol Scinto. She was truly one of a kind. But the impression she left on friends, neighbors, colleagues, and most especially on her family means that we will see hints and glimpses of her goodness wherever we are.

Thank you, Carol, and blessed be.