"Former    victims of trafficking can recognize those being trafficked," says Anuradha Koirala, 52, the founder and
director of Main Nepal (which, loosely translated, means "Mother's House"), the organization that coordinates this
and four other such border patrols between Nepal and India. With the police, Maiti Nepal also stages raids on
brothels to rescue sex slaves, bringing those who have HIV/ AIDS, like Gita and Nisha, back to Maiti Nepal's
hospice to live out their final days.

"Not so long ago, I weighed 126 pounds; now I'm down to
just 95 pounds," says 20-yearold Gita, who was infected
with HIV after being forced to service as many as 50 men
a day for the three years she was in sexual servitude. "I
know the disease is taking over my body. The diarrhea is
constant. So are the sweats and headaches." Gita also
has painful bone tuberculosis, a complication of the
disease. "I know I don't have long," she says. "But stop-
ping the traffickers is my revenge - the only one I have."

Saving others from her own fate
Nisha, also 20, is called a "tigress" by her colleagues,
because of her ferocity on patrol. At age 13, she accep-
ted a job from a family friend to work at a jewelry
business in India. She was duped. "What the woman
really sold," Nisha says, "was girls."

When Nisha first arrived at the brothel, she was locked in a cage for seven days and denied food until she began
servicing customers. Nisha's cage, like others, was a narrow cubicle, just wide enough for a thin, stained
mattress. She turned tricks for less than $1 each. It was money that she never saw. Like most sex slaves
Nisha had been sold for a paltry amount--usually $300 to $1000-and told she had to pay back her purchase
price before she would be released. But this never happens, since the slaves are also billed for rent, food, water
and clothing-and even their forced abortions, should they become pregnant.

"I felt like a caged animal at the brothel," Nisha says.
"All I could think of was how to escape." After two years,
Nisha managed to run away when she was sent to a
clinic for birthcontrol shots. (She went to the police, who
put her in touch with Maiti Nepal.) But escapes like hers
are extremely rare. Generally, there are only two ways
out of the brothels: death or rescue in a police raid, with
the assistance of a humanitarian agency like Maiti Nepal.

Rescuing sex slaves is slow, dangerous work. Maiti
Nepal receives little help from the police - who are often
paid off by the brothel owners - and many of its employ-
ees are openly threatened by the traffickers. "They have
broken into our offices twice, looking for files," says
Anuradha. "They know that we gather evidence and
make extensive reports. If we don't do that, the police
won't prosecute."

 Anuradha Koirala (left) the founder of rescue organization Maiti Nepal,
takes care of recently rescued sex slaves.

Despite such obstacles, Maiti Nepal rescues several hundred sex slaves each year, bringing many of them to their
hospice, a tranquil plot of land on the Nepalese border with vegetable gardens and farm animals. Yet even for the
lucky young women who've been rescued, life continues to be a struggle. Main Nepal tries to locate their families
so they can return home, but it's often impossible. Most girls had never traveled outside the village in which they
were born until the day they were trafficked; they often don't know exactly where they came from, or how to get
back. Even if the girls could return home, many communities would shun anyone who harbored HIV or AIDS.
In fact, until a few years ago, when Main Nepal and similar agencies began campaigning, even the Nepalese
government was reluctant to accept victims back into the country, for fear they would spread disease.

"I would like to see my family, but I'm afraid," says
Apshara Pariyar, 17, who was trafficked at 14 and en-
slaved for a year-and-a-half before being rescued.
"When a girl has AIDS, like me, villagers treat her like
she is more dangerous than a leper. Other girls have
tried to go home, but their families become stigmatized.
So most don't."

Without enough money for expensive AIDS drugs,
these girls essentially come to the hospice to die.
"We're dealing with the constant loss of young people
who've become our friends," Anuradha says. "Not long
ago, two girls and the child of one died within a few
days of each other. I went into a depression. I asked
myself, What were their mistakes that they were
condemned to die this way? What happened is no
fault of their own. Others enjoyed them, and in doing
so, destroyed them."   

A life no one deserves
Each of Maiti Nepal's hospice residents has her own
haunting story. "I'm dead now," says 24-year-old
Pushpa Rana, her speech slurring. Her face is slightly
lopsided where her cheekbone and jaw were smashed;
her right arm hangs limply at her side. "They killed the
girl I was before," she says.

 Anuradha takes to the street, displaying photos of known sex traffickers -
some of them women - to increase the awareness o9f the issue. 

Ten years ago, Pushpa was a regular teenager living on her father's farm in western Nepal. Then, after a common
ruse in which a trafficker "marries" a naive village girl in a fake ceremony, Pushpa's new "husband" sold her to an
Indian brothel. There, she serviced some 20 customers a day every day for seven years, eventually contracting
AIDS and tuberculosis. She is also brain-damaged from the beatings she received whenever she tried to escape.
The final battering left her unconscious, bleeding from her ears and nose, her right arm and leg permanently
paralyzed; she is now prone to epileptic seizures.

Many girls at the hospice were trafficked young, but none as young as 16-year-old Jeena Shrestha, who was just
7 when she was sold into prostitution. "My baby teeth started falling out after I had been in the brothel for eight
months," she says. She was diagnosed as HIV-positive at age 9, and she didn't even reach puberty until a year
after she arrived at the hospice. Like Pushpa, she now has full-blown AIDS.

Seven-year-old Jeena had just registered for first
grade when she was sold by her employer. (She had
been working as a nursemaid for a toddler: not an
unusual arrangement in Nepal, where kids as young
as 6 are frequently hired to care for neighbors'
children.) "I was taken on a four-day train ride to
Bombay and left at a brothel," Jeena recalls. "I was
told to take a bath, so I'd be fresh. Then they put me
to work. Customers tried to have sex with me, but
they couldn't because I was too small.

"I cried and kicked and ran," says Jeena. "The ghar-
wali [brothel manager] beat me black and blue. She
made me sleep under a bed where customers were
having sex.

"The next day, they held me down while three men
raped me," Jeena says, her voice fading. "I was torn,
bleeding badly. Every time after that, there was such
pain."

Like Pushpa, Jeena tried several times to escape. Each time, she was severely beaten and nearly starved as
punishment. "The gharwali told me if I kept running away, she would grind hot chilies and put it in my
private parts. She said this was a torture that would make me scream. After that, I just gave up. I was 7; I couldn't
fight these people." Four months later, Jeena was sold to another brothel, where she lived and worked in a cage.
Then, one day, she woke up with no feeling in her legs. Doctors discovered that she had suffered spinal-nerve
and disk injuries from being raped by men considerably larger than she. They also tested her for HIV.
She was positive, and also infected with multiple STDs.

Jeena was 11 when she came to the hospice. She was underweight and needed help walking. She still suffers
painfrom her spinal injuries.

Dying so that others may live
"The girls in the hospice have lost their youth and their futures. They are dying before they have lived," says
Anuradha. "After the hell they've been through, I want them to live in a peaceful environment with companionship
and affection. My dream is that they will be able to die in peace, with dignity." Watching the hospice residents
play with the young children fathered by unknown brothel customers (who, like their mothers, have HIV/ AIDS),
Anuradha appears to have achieved her goal.

The healthiest women at the hospice take part in touring prevention camps held in villages across Nepal, where
they use play-acting and songs to tell their cautionary stories to parents and girls. These awareness programs are
the only effective way to disseminate the message. In Nepal, most of the population is illiterate. Few villages have
electricity, and fewer people can afford a transistor radio or the batteries to operate it. Consequently, most girls
who end up in India's brothels have never even heard of sex trafficking until they are victimized.

Twenty-two-year-old Anita Khadka has taught at a number of camps. But, while Anita helps educate, she never
admits that the story she tells is her own. "I'm too ashamed to tell them the truth. It's too painful," she says.
"People will say that I'm diseased, and that I shouldn't be there."

Anita was trafficked when traveling to the home of her best friend's fiance; the two women were sold together by
the fake bridegroom. Anita's trafficker, who is now serving a 20-year sentence, was one of the first in Nepal to go
to jail. A law to curtail trafficking was enacted in 1963, but until organizations like Maiti Nepal started making
waves, it was never enforced.

"Twenty years is not enough. He gave me a death sentence. He should get the same," says Anita, who has AIDS.
"In my brothel, I saw two girls hang themselves from the ceiling fan. They couldn't stand it anymore. They died in
India, far from their homes. There was no one to cry for them."

Anita is the self-appointed mother to the orphaned children in the hospice. "They are the children I'll never have,"
she says, shampooing the hair of one of the 11 youngsters she bathes and dresses every day. Pregnant at 15 in
the brothel, Anita begged to keep her baby. "They forced me to have an abortion, then put me back to work three
days later. I bled for nine months," she says bitterly. "My life is ruined. Working with the children helps me forget -
until a child or girl here dies from AIDS. It's very hard to watch.
You know you'll die like that. Soon, it will be your turn."

She is silent for a minute. Then she adds, "But everything happens for a reason. Maybe this awful thing
happened to me so I could stop it from happening to others." •