A heartbreaking look at girls sold for sex

By Rebecca Ostriker | December 5, 2004

What can you say about a 12-year-old girl whose god has died?

Each year, thousands of Nepalese children are sold into sexual slavery in India. Often kidnapped or duped, these girls are raped and beaten until they submit to lives of prostitution. Many call the day they were sold ''the day my god died."

Boston native Andrew Levine's first feature documentary has a lot to say about them, and it's heartbreaking. Filmed in India and Nepal, ''The Day My God Died" uses spy-camera footage to take us into Bombay's grim Kamathipura neighborhood, the largest concentrated red-light district in the world, known as ''The Cages." According to the film, some 200,000 prostitutes work here. The average age is just 14, but most will not live long; 80 percent of them have HIV.

The documentary also offers hope, however. Nonprofit groups are working hard to rescue the girls, and we meet several who have escaped. One, a pretty, dark-haired teenager named Gina, was sold at the age of 7. She is now dying of AIDS, but says she's happy in the care of the nonprofit Maiti Nepal. ''If I hadn't been sold into this sex trade, I had a desire to study and eventually get married," she says, laughing shyly. ''I have no desires. Nothing. Really. The fact that I've come back to Nepal is enough for me."

Narrated by Tim Robbins and Winona Ryder, ''The Day My God Died" will be broadcast Dec. 19 on WGBH (Channel 44) at 9 p.m., with Susan Sarandon as host. But local audiences have a chance to see it first: A free advance screening takes place in the Boston Public Library's Rabb Lecture Hall Thursday at 6:30 p.m., followed by a panel discussion including Laura Lederer, senior adviser on trafficking at the US State Department, and Brigitte Cazalis Collins, executive director of Friends of Maiti Nepal. For information, visit www.friendsofmaitinepal.org or www.thedaymygoddied.com.

Rebecca Ostriker can be reached at ostriker@globe.com.

© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company