Her painful odyssey, which also led trough the former Yugoslavia and Albania, ended when Italian police stopped her and trafficker at a train station Lecce, at the southern tip of Italy's Adriatic Coast. The trafficker was arrested, and she was sent to the New Wings center, where trafficked women have chance to begin rebuilding their lives. In a novel approach to a growing global problem, New Wings tries both to help victims and to change the economic conditions in their home countries that make them vulnerable.
Rev. Cesare Lodeserto, a Catholic priest, started New Wings four years ago in San Foca, 10 miles from Lecce, which is a common entry point for people-smuggling. As the women go through the legal process of denouncing their traffickers - one way of breaking the chain of these criminal networks - they work in the bakeries and restaurants of the nearby town, and the youngest cook and clean at the refugee center. Most of women stay in Italy, where immigration laws offer special protection to trafficked women. For those who want to go back home, New Wings' satellite projects in Moldova, Bulgaria and Ukraine, help reintegrate the women and warn potential victims against the false promises of traffickers.
Throughout Italy, 48 various programs assist female victims of traffickers. Italian law gives participants six-month legal residency even if they do not denounce their traffickers; and they can renew residency if they have found jobs. These provisions distinguish the law from others in Europe, where denouncement is obligatory to obtain residency and is sometimes followed by repatriation. According to government figures, there are an estimated 3,500 trafficked women in Italy, and 1,200 have taken part in the programs.
According to the UN, 3 million people are trafficked each year in the world, and the figure is rising. An estimated 50 international crime groups now traffic 400,000 people into Western Europe annually. Across Europe, there are an estimated 50,000 trafficked women, according to the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration.
"On international level, the response has been stupor," says Father Lodeserto. "Italy has the only extensive social protection program. We are a model for other countries." Vittoria Tola, president of the Italian governmental committee that oversees programs aiding trafficed women, says that New Wings, funded by Italian government and Roman Catholic church, is especially effective because "they have resources to house a lot of women are self-sufficient." After two years at the center, Ms. Slobodciuk is heading North to work in a pizzeria. "I speak Italian well by now. No one will know me or my story there. I think I can do it," she says.
The youngest New Wings participant is 14, with the average age 20. Most are from Moldova and Ukraine. Some say that to escape poverty and personal problems, they left home to become prostitutes. But most thought that they were going to the West as nannies or waitresses...
