After a two year legal battle, in which Charlyn herself bravely testified in court and pointed out the pimp who had sold her, justice was served as the perpetrator was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Since becoming operational in Cebu in 2006, IJM Cebu has found that it can take judges anywhere from two to four years to reach a decision in an anti-trafficking case – because there are not enough courts for the number of cases being tried, hearings are only scheduled approximately every three months, prolonging the legal process for years. Though IJM Cebu has dozens of cases pending, this is the first to come to a conviction – the first, the team hopes, of many.

Charlyn, the survivor rescued in the case, now lives in the care of a loving aftercare home, where she has chosen to volunteer with vulnerable street children. Her IJM social workers continue to provide ongoing support.

Upon the announcement of the conviction, Giovanni Luna, the IJM attorney who prosecuted this case alongside the public prosecutor, celebrated: “This victory in court allows me to realize that justice is real here on earth, as it is beyond.”

In late August 2010, Rati’s father and stepmother took her with them on a trip to Mumbai to meet a friend of her father. At the train station, her parents gave her a strange instruction: They told her to wait in a certain spot and then left. Rati waited all day at the station – growing more and more confused – and, by evening, she was very hungry. A woman at the train station approached her and offered some candy; ravenous, Rati ate it quickly.

But the woman was not a kind stranger. The candy was drugged, and Rati fell unconscious. When she awoke, she was in an unfamiliar place – a place she soon discovered was a brothel.

Padma, the brothel keeper, ordered her to take a bath and change into revealing clothing. When Rati refused, Padma beat her. She then tied Rati’s hands and legs together with a rope, and sent in her first customer, an old man.

In the next 15 days, Rati was raped two to three times every day. She persistently refused to serve customers; Padma responded to each refusal with a beating. Padma told Rati she would be forced to work in the brothel for two years, to pay back the sum for which she had bought Rati from the trafficker.

As Rati endured this nightmare, IJM staff had discovered Padma’s crimes – and began working with local authorities to plan a rescue operation.

On September 13, 2010, Rati and an older girl who worked at the brothel were watching TV in the brothel’s front room. Around 7 p.m., they overhead a woman from a neighboring brothel say she had seen police outside. Rati and the other girl were scared: Seeking to ensure they wouldn’t turn to the police for help, Padma had told them that the police would beat them if they were found. The girls had believed this, and both hurried up a ladder to the second-floor loft to hide as they had been instructed.

The rescue operation underway, IJM and police entered the brothel and searched the building for more than two hours, combing through four rooms on the main floor, two rooms in the second-floor loft, the brothel keeper’s quarters and the main foyer – but they could not find the two girls they knew to be held there. They searched three other neighboring brothels, with no results.

Growing desperate, at about 9:30 p.m., they noticed inconsistencies in the layout of the two floors of Padma’s brothel. Her quarters on the main floor extended a few feet further than the rooms directly above it in the loft. The team suspected a hidden compartment upstairs, but the wood mica wall paneling revealed no trapdoors or possible entrances.

Finally, the faint ringing sound of a cell phone indicated to the search team that someone was hiding beyond the wall.

Determined, police and IJM rescuers found a crowbar and broke through the back wall of the loft. Behind the wall were two teenage girls, shivering in the dark – one of them clutching the cell phone whose ring had betrayed their location. The compartment behind the wall was cramped and dirty, its small trap door hidden under the bed. The girls had hidden there, hands over their mouths to keep from making noise, for more than two hours.

The girls climbed out of the hole in the wall, shaking and crying. Rati immediately trusted the people she assumed to be her rescuers, pleading with IJM social workers to take her away. “This woman beats me, and forces me to serve customers,” she said. Padma was placed under arrest.

Leaving the brothel with police and IJM social workers, Rati calmed down. “I was waiting that someone should come,” she told a social worker.

“We told her not to worry,” said Sheela Alfanso, an IJM social worker. “‘We said, ‘no one is going to harm you. We are there for you. You have told someone to come and rescue you, so we came.”

While the second young woman rescued – a major – chose not to accept IJM’s offer of help, Rati is now recovering in an aftercare home, where she will learn basic literacy skills, Hindi, English and math. “I will stand on my own feet,” she said. “I will show my parents that even if they have left me at the train station, I have made something of my life.”

*A pseudonym.

In one recent court ruling, IJM Cambodia’s legal team saw both the fruit of their advocacy – and the need for continued resolve.

This fall, a Cambodian court sentenced three perpetrators to 10 years in prison following a trial in which three IJM clients testified against their traffickers.

Following the 2009 police operation that freed six victims from a brothel in Siem Reap, Cambodia, IJM staff helped place the victims in aftercare. They also provided legal assistance to the three victims who accepted IJM’s offer of free legal representation.

Despite clear evidence of a felony trafficking crime, the perpetrators were originally charged with a misdemeanor, facing just two to five years in prison if they were convicted. IJM lawyers challenged the charges. “We want our lawyers to skilfully advocate for the perpetrators to be charged according to facts of the case,” Stayton says. “We want to pursue justice in a full and fair way for each victim.” IJM’s advocacy for accurate charges was successful, and the case was tried under the correct article this fall.

At the end of the trial, a teenage victim testified that at the brothel she was regularly locked in a room for hours at a time and exploited by customers.

The brothel owner was convicted under Article 28 of Cambodia’s anti-trafficking law, declared guilty of procuring child prostitution. Two other perpetrators were convicted in absentia of being accomplices to the crime.

While the judges did sentence the three perpetrators to prison, they did not award much-needed financial compensation to the victims. IJM’s legal team is considering what strategies they may use to advocate for the victims’ financial restitution in the future. “There’s no amount of money that would adequately compensate for the kind of abuse the victims suffer,” Stayton says, but “it’s significant for the courts to order the compensation because it hits the perpetrators at the source of their motive for exploiting.”

IJM staff are encouraged that the courts responded to requests for a fair trial. As the clients continue to heal and gain dignity in their new lives, IJM staff will ensure they receive appropriate aftercare, and IJM’s legal team remains dedicated to advocating for the girls for as long as needed.