Searching for Marita - May 08 Issue Pg 91-96

Title: Searching For Marita
Author: Daniel Rome Levine
Origin: May 08 Readers Digest Page 91 ~ 96


Basically, this story describes the "shadowy world of human trafficking and forced prostitution. A woman by the name of Susana Trimarco from Argentina set out to find her missing daughter. Witnesses saw her daughter being pushed into a car. Therefore, she suspect that her daughter was being forced into prostitution.

To find her daughter, she even resorted to unimaginable means - disguising as a prostitute and venturing into bars, hoping to know where her daughter was. Not only so, she even exhausted most of her savings, sold her house as well as Marita's plus two cars to pay for her investigation. It also strained her relationship with her husband - Daniel.

The bar owners and human traffickers would not take that lying down though ... Several of them attempted hit-and-runs so as to intimidate her and to silence her. However, instead of being intimidated, she was somewhat "spurred" by them and participated in the campaign for preventing human trafficking more actively. Many women who had their daughters kidnapped, went to Susana instead of going to the police. Susana responded to each one and did her best.

As a result, more that 200 girls who were forced into prostitution owe their freedom to Susana.
I feel that this was a very touching story that not only alert readers of the "shadowy world of human trafficking and forced prostitution", it also shows how noble a mother's love could be.

Furthermore, the story also shows a mother could go to any desperate measures, so as to save her kids. For instance, Susana even disguised as a prostitute and venture into bars so as to gather information about her daughter. Moreover, she had to risk her life as many human traffickers and pub owners were after her life; even the police refuse to help her as she was a powerless woman.

Personally, i feel that the girls that were forced into prostitution were very pitiful. They were separated from their parents unwillingly. Not only so, some, even many, were tortured by their "employers" as well as their customers. They were fed drugs and beaten severely to break their will. I hope that human traffickers would stop resorting to such methods to earn money as it seemed so cold-hearted and cruel to separate the girls away from their parents.



Done by: Ho Yue Long (Nate)