Scores of migrant girls quietly vanishing from Indonesia
It was a chance for 16-year-old Marselina Neonbota to leave her isolated village in one of the poorest parts of Indonesia for neighboring Malaysia, where some migrant workers can earn more in a few years than in a lifetime at home. A way out for a girl so hungry for a life beyond subsistence farming that she walked 22 kilometers (14 miles) every day to the schoolhouse and back.
She grabbed the opportunity — and disappeared. The cheerful child known to her family as Lina joined the army of Indonesians who migrate every year to wealthier countries in Asia and the Middle East for work. Thousands come home in coffins, or vanish. Among them, possibly hundreds of trafficked girls have quietly disappeared from the impoverished western half of Timor island and elsewhere in Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara province.
The National Agency for Placement and Protection of Indonesian Workers has counted more than 2,600 cases of dead or missing Indonesian migrants since 2014. And even those numbers mostly leave out people like Lina who are recruited illegally -- an estimated 30 percent of Indonesia's 6.2 million migrant workers.
On that night in 2010, Lina didn't seem to sense the danger posed by the stranger named Sarah. But Lina's great-aunt and great-uncle, who had raised her, were hesitant.
Sarah insisted they could trust her; she was related to the village chief. And Lina would only be gone two years.
Lina's aunt, Teresia Tasoin, knew a Malaysian salary could support the whole family. Her husband — fighting both a teenager's excitement and a crushing headache — doubted he could stop Lina from going.
Still, the couple wanted to hold a Catholic prayer service for Lina before she left. Sarah promised she would only take Lina to the provincial capital of Kupang for one night to organize her paperwork, then bring her back the next day. It was a lie.
Less than one hour after Sarah walked into their home, she walked back out with Lina. And just like that, their girl was gone.
Looking back on it now, Tasoin crumbles under the weight of what-ifs. "I regret it," she says through tears.
"I regret letting her go."