RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Three Venezue­lan teenagers, who were al­leged­ly vic­tims of hu­man traf­fick­ing, were res­cued by a lo­cal cou­ple on Tues­day morn­ing. The teens be­lieve the cou­ple risked their own lives to take them to safe­ty.

The girls are be­tween 15 and 17 years old and were forced to run away from a spa in San Fer­nan­do, where they al­leged that they were be­ing held cap­tive and forced to work. They claimed they were al­so sub­ject­ed to var­i­ous types of as­sault.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the wife of­ten went to the spa to get her nails and hair done. Dur­ing one of those vis­its, one of the teen girls passed a mes­sage to her about what she and the oth­ers had been en­dur­ing.

The woman, along with her hus­band, even­tu­al­ly went to San Fer­nan­do where they res­cued the girls. Dur­ing the ex­trac­tion, the girls were forced to hide and left so hur­ried­ly that they were on­ly wear­ing their un­der­gar­ments.

Venezue­lan ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­lez con­firmed yes­ter­day that the cou­ple con­tact­ed her and she met them at an undis­closed lo­ca­tion that same day.
The girls were left in her care.

Gon­za­lez ex­plained that be­cause of the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion she did not want to say much but added that there are many hu­man traf­fick­ing vic­tims in the coun­try.
She al­so said at­tor­neys from Quan­tum Le­gal and Themis Foun­da­tion hand­ed the teenagers over to the

Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU).
A CTU of­fi­cial yes­ter­day con­firmed that the girls were in their care and were now at a safe house. The CTU of­fi­cial said the girls are very trau­ma­tised and in­con­solable but will be giv­en coun­selling.

A po­lice source al­so said an ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched but said state­ments had not yet been tak­en from the vic­tims.

On Tues­day, the CTU re­port­ed that it met with the Na­tion­al Task Force Against Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Pro­tec­tion Work­ing Group (NT­FWG) for dis­cus­sions and dis­closed that one ma­jor out­come was that a Mem­o­ran­da of Un­der­stand­ing will soon be signed that will pro­mote smoother co­or­di­na­tion and en­hanced sup­port sys­tems for traf­fick­ing vic­tims.

CTU Deputy Di­rec­tor Dane-Marie Mar­shall ex­plained that the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s vi­sion ex­tends to “fa­cil­i­tat­ing seam­less rein­te­gra­tion of vic­tims in­to so­ci­ety, nur­tur­ing them in­to re­silient sur­vivors”.

The Na­tion­al Task Force Against Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Pro­tec­tion Work­ing Group com­pris­es of­fi­cials from the Po­lice Ser­vice, gov­ern­ment min­istries and civ­il so­ci­ety.

The CTU can be con­tact­ed through the toll-free, anony­mous hot­line at 800-4CTU (4288).