Nigeria Abroad
Princess Okokon, a former victim of sex trafficking, escaped the streets but had a deep desire to help the women that remained.
“In 1999, I was on the streets for 6 months and then ran away. I saw so many women that suffered like me. I saw girls, I saw older women all on the streets. I ran from Turin with Alberto’s help. But I wanted to go back to be able to help the others left behind,” she recently told Forbes’ Valentina di Donato.
Okokon and her husband Alberto Mossino, president of anti-trafficking organization in Italy PIAM Onlus, together run the operation based in Asti, the northwestern region of Piedmont. The organization aims to get women off the streets, sue the people that trafficked them, and empower the victims through skills that can turn into work.
When the sex market in Italy stopped due to the stringent Covid-19 lockdown measures, the business of human trafficking was also at a standstill.
“The traffickers don’t see the women and many times young girls as human beings at all. When we were in lockdown, everything was closed, they couldn’t work in the streets. The traffickers forgot about them; they left them without anything, they didn’t even give them money or food to survive,” Okokon’s husband Mossino said.
The couple offered support to some of the women left without help amid the pandemic, yet some wouldn’t leave fearing commitment oaths they swore back in Nigeria to their traffickers. Through such rituals carried out by juju priests, traffickers exert psychological control over the victims who are often threatened to comply or face deadly consequences.
Over the years, Piam Onlus has helped many women by teaching them new skills: artisanal craft work and culinary skills, and others have gone on to get degrees.
“The first group of women we helped are now in Canada, London, some are even here in Asti. They studied, did courses, and even went back to school,” Okokon said.
In recent years, however, things have changed: “Now we have more young minors coming, who are so easy to take advantage of, and being that they are so young and not educated, it’s more work to help them. They often just think of money and not their future. It’s so important to help teach them to invest in themselves.”
“These women and minors aren’t refugees, they are trafficked victims; it’s something very different. Our mission is to do social integration to help them get back on their feet. We also help them to sue their traffickers,” said Okokon.
“We want to help them to have the capacity to work after they do these courses, so that they are independent and not reliant on traffickers.”
This story first appeared in Nigeria Abroad
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