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This is about a girl with the street name Marisa, a Honduran working in San Pedro at a ficha bar across the street from Belize Bank. She was owned by a Chinese group, openly known for having girls for sale. The bank and the bar are on the main street of San Pedro one block from the old immigration office on the island.
The trafficked girls of San Pedro in most cases do not understand they are trafficked. They understand they have no place for help and that they are considered whores. They are a close-knit group, these girls on the island working in these bars. The ones who are free after work stick together and, in fact, often live together in shacks. This is a form of protection for each other. The only one they have.
Marisa had spent a year on the Island at first working as a housekeeper at a large resort. This was a typical resort in that it seldom paid on time. Having to pay for her room weekly, she found herself often on the street if she did not get paid by the resort.
She made the choice for survival, meaning food and a roof over her head. So she began to work in a bar. She managed to limit her interaction with men to short visits in the bathroom. Oral sex was her role.
Through our efforts to help to these women and young girls, our reputation was known within the system. We are well known by the underground of the prostitution, ficha bars and trafficked women in San Pedro, Belize and other parts of the country.
We were in San Pedro one night when a girl known as Yenny reached us and told me that Marisa was in trouble. Her boss had beaten her and she at was at Belize Bank parking lot. At 2 in the morning we found Yenny and made our way to the parking lot.
We found Marisa in a ball in the corner of the lot. The bar owner had beaten her by holding her hair and smashing her head on a concrete pillar. Then be had scraped his nails across her face to disfigure her.
Marisa was in shock and bleeding. We gathered her up and took her to a safe house in the San Pablo area of San Pedro. Like an army medical unit, these women treated Marisa. Using a needle and thread they stitched her head. Cleaned her up and placed her on a bed shared by five girls. They all sat through the night comforting Marisa.
I returned the next day to see a child of just 18 with her eyes swollen shut, black and blue. She stayed at the safe house for a week. I made arrangements and had her taken off the Island and returned home.
Always the question is asked why did girls like this do not run? To answer the question think about how powerless you feel when the electricity goes out at your home or the water stops. Or you are at an ATM machine out of money and the machine is down. You have somewhere you can go while you wait for power and water to be returned. You can call a friend if you need money. You could be on the street and stop a police officer. These opportunities do not exist for the trafficked and so-called “worthless” women of San Pedro, Belize and rarely in the rest of the country.
