[The In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion]

Venezue­lan-born clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Livia Rin­con has ded­i­cat­ed her life to lift­ing oth­ers from their dark­est per­son­al depths–trau­mas which many peo­ple can­not even imag­ine. Through­out her 36-year ca­reer, the 61-year-old has worked with sur­vivors of traf­fick­ing, rang­ing from young chil­dren to the el­der­ly. Nev­er once has she con­sid­ered leav­ing it be­hind.

“Thank God, I have a lot of spir­it be­cause you must be strong, and you have to know how to deal with it be­cause in work­ing with trau­ma you have to recog­nise your trau­ma. This is the first step. Al­so, as care­givers, you have sec­ondary trau­ma. When you lis­ten to sto­ries of 12 or 13 year olds who were ex­ploit­ed or traf­ficked, you must be re­silient. If you say and feel that you want to save every­one, you will lose your mind. Some­times, I say I am work­ing, and I will do my best, but I know it’s not enough. It’s big­ger than us.”

Rin­con is one of the spe­cialised clin­i­cians en­gaged by Fam­i­lies in Ac­tion and who has been as­sid­u­ous­ly work­ing with the Heal, Em­pow­er, Rise Counter Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons (HER CTIP) Project which is a part­ner­ship be­tween the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM) Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID). Since April 2022, the HER CTIP project has been strength­en­ing sup­port sys­tems for sur­vivors of hu­man traf­fick­ing in T&T. The aim is to en­sure time­ly and qual­i­ty sup­port ser­vices that help to heal trau­ma and em­pow­er sur­vivors to ful­fil their dreams.

Rin­con’s work start­ed in her beloved Venezuela, but now con­tin­ues in her new home of T&T. She ad­mit­ted that ini­tial­ly, the move was not easy. From work­ing 12 hours a day in hec­tic Venezue­lan hos­pi­tals, the com­par­a­tive­ly slow­er pace of work in San Fer­nan­do left her ques­tion­ing her pur­pose. And as more mi­grants came to T&T, Rin­con’s work­load be­gan to in­crease. “Af­ter all, a mi­grant’s ex­pe­ri­ence is unique­ly vul­ner­a­ble and trau­mat­ic,” the psy­chol­o­gist said. The rea­son to leave home, the jour­ney to the Caribbean, and adapt­ing to a new lan­guage and cul­ture are all trau­mat­ic. She still re­mem­bers the first sur­vivor of traf­fick­ing she worked with in T&T–a 12 year old. That ex­pe­ri­ence would set the tone for her work to come.

“When I was in Venezuela, I nev­er imag­ined I would work with vic­tims of hu­man traf­fick­ing and this sort of abuse. At that time, we were work­ing to have the first safe place in south Trinidad. We start­ed with ten chil­dren and soon had 100 chil­dren. We de­cid­ed we need­ed to do some­thing. It wasn’t on­ly chil­dren, it was al­so women, and all of them were vul­ner­a­ble and trau­ma­tised. I re­ceived fam­i­lies that gave up their chil­dren for life or were forced to have sex to sur­vive. The cost is high,” she lament­ed, as her voice soft­ened. Rin­con al­so said be­cause of the eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances many mi­grants and their fam­i­lies are in, work­ers be­come burnt out, vul­ner­a­ble and wary, and chil­dren who may be left at home for many hours un­su­per­vised be­come easy tar­gets.

How­ev­er, while the work of psy­chol­o­gists is im­por­tant, she said it was al­so es­sen­tial that or­di­nary peo­ple do their part too. Sen­si­ti­sa­tion and ed­u­ca­tion of the pop­u­la­tion are need­ed to make a more im­pact­ful change. Rin­con be­lieves “when men go to the bar and want to have sex with young girls, they don’t ask how old they are”.

“We have a big prob­lem, how can we change this cy­cle?” Rin­con asked.

“We are on­ly talk­ing about the girls. I have men/boys–no­body is talk­ing about them. It’s hard. It’s hard for a boy to say he was traf­ficked. Of course, we need to work with the sur­vivors of traf­fick­ing, but al­so, we need to do some­thing with the reg­u­lar pop­u­la­tion,” she added.

An im­por­tant part of her pur­pose, the clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist said, is to make peo­ple un­der­stand that trau­ma does not on­ly mean some­thing ter­ri­ble has hap­pened. In many in­stances, she said, we may not re­alise that we too are trau­ma­tised. We, as a so­ci­ety, need to talk more about trau­ma to re­move the stig­ma, Rin­con urged.

Asked what gives her a sense of ac­com­plish­ment in what she does, Ri­con, yet again, in her usu­al self­less man­ner, said that the an­swer was to be found in oth­ers.

“Most of the sur­vivors of traf­fick­ing are 17 years old, and you have to pre­pare them to leave the shel­ter to live a reg­u­lar life. Some say they want some­thing dif­fer­ent. How­ev­er, for me, if I have a group of 20, and one of them says ‘it changed their life–I’m go­ing to do some­thing dif­fer­ent,’ then it’s okay for me,” Rin­con said. Recog­nis­ing the need for spe­cialised sup­port, the HER CTIP Project con­tin­ues to work with part­ners in T&T to ex­pand ac­ces­si­ble and trau­ma-in­formed ser­vices for sur­vivors of traf­fick­ing.