City teen saved from trafficker

Organisation turns girl back at airport

DESPERATE for a job, a Cape Town teenager was almost ensnared as a sex slave were it not for intervention by a local nonprofit organisation which prevented her from boarding a flight to Joburg.

The 19-year-old from Garden Village in Maitland was yesterday convinced not to board a Kulula flight when the Activist Networking Against the Exploitation of Children (Anex) talked to her at the airline’s check-in counter.

Anex director Claudia Smit said the girl’s mother phoned the organisation on Thursday night and she spotted the signs of human trafficking.

Weekend Argus yesterday interviewed the girl’s mother who remains worried for her daughter’s safety. She did not want to be named to protect her daughter’s identity.

“My daughter went on to some job website. She was then talking about going to Johannesburg. I thought she would go to visit our family there,” said the mother.

“But then she told me she was going to work there. But I thought how could that be possible as she has no work experience? I then got a call from my cousin in Joburg, saying that my daughter contacted them for a place to stay because she was going to work there.

“She only told my cousin’s daughter that she has been liaising with a man. I tried to ask her where she was going and where she was going to work.”

The teen’s mother said she found out from her daughter’s friend that the alleged job would entail modelling.

The mother then went to a local police station for help. Police officers put her in contact with Anex.

Smit said the teen had been on the verge of being trafficked, which means she was about to be “recruited, transported and exploited”.

Smit said the teen had been in contact with a man who asked her if she could afford the flight and she said no.

“The man told her they would pay for her flight and a taxi to the airport (in Cape Town),” said Smit.

Smit and the teen’s mother obtained a copy of the flight information the recruiter sent.

Smit said: “When I got her this morning she was checking in at Kulula (airline). I asked her, ‘Can I have five minutes of your time?’

“I then got the number of the recruiter and phoned him. He said that she would be an online consultant. I said he needed to explain how he recruited someone from Cape Town with no job contract.

“I said this sounds like human trafficking. I said to him that she would come there and be indebted to them for the air ticket. I said, ‘What if she does not do what you want to do?’ He said they would put her on the next flight to Cape Town.”

Smit said the man eventually confirmed they recruited sex workers.

Patric Solomons, director of Cape Town-based child rights group Molo Songlolo, said most trafficking cases countrywide were for sexual exploitation.