Mexico’s victims of sex-trafficking find sanctuary in Garden House (Globe & Mail)
It was a dusty, sunny day on the outskirts of Tijuana. While much of Mexico roiled in civil unrest last month, the upscale neighbourhood overlooking the Pacific Ocean was an oasis of calm. Inside a sprawling two-storey home, a group of girls sang a traditional birthday song to a slim young woman dressed in scrubs as she laughed and wiped away tears.
“I’m making a wish!” said Hilda, squeezing her eyes closed. She stooped and blew out the candles on her cake to claps and cheers. The girls swarmed to hug her. This was a goodbye party as well as a birthday celebration, because Hilda, now 18, is the first woman to graduate from La Casa del Jardin – The Garden House – a group home for victims of child sex-trafficking in Mexico.
La Casa del Jardin is one of three such homes in the country, and the only one that exists along the border between Mexico and the United States, where the need is high and growing.
Hilda was one of the first girls turned over to the home by Mexican authorities after they discovered she had been sexually abused and, like many trafficking victims, sold into prostitution by her family. Over the past months, she has emerged from a self-imposed cocoon of silence; she now works with children at a health centre and has just found an apartment of her own, a few kilometres away from the group home.
Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/mexicos-victims-of-sex-trafficking-find-sanctuary-in-garden-house/article22169001/?cmpid=rss1
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They are often the forgotten people.
Well said. 
