Disrupting Deception: How Ethiopian girls get trapped in trafficking—and what healing looks like
It all begins with a false promise.
Job recruiters explain that 15-year-old Ayantu can transcend the limitations of her small Ethiopian village and non-existent education. Working in the city will give a girl like her better job opportunities, a better life. She can even send some money home to help her family.
Why not accept an offer to join a world bigger than her own? Ayantu leaves the familiar to find her promised future.
At first, she deals with new streets, new bosses, and new housekeeping tasks well enough for a 15-year-old. But it doesn’t take long for her to realize something’s amiss.
Ayantu is passed around to new homes often and with increasingly cold and abusive treatment. She doesn’t see a dime of compensation. She even spends some nights utterly homeless and alone on the dangerous streets of the city.
Her new employers didn’t have her future in mind at all.
Her dreams turn into disappointment and then into despair.
She and her parents have been deceived—unintentionally entangled in an Ethiopian human trafficking network.
Systemic trauma lies at the heart of the global trafficking crisis. And millions of children become institutionalized or separated from their family each year as a result.
What pours fuel on this fire? Lack of awareness and resources. Prevailing corruption. Devastating poverty. Inequitable policies.
It’s a widespread epidemic of hurt people hurting people. And it’s absolutely wrecking 600,000 orphaned or displaced Ethiopian children like Ayantu, leaving them utterly alone (UNICEF).
The trauma leads to feeling rejected. Deeply wounded. Without hope.
Pause. Trauma like this may feel too daunting and unsolvable. But it isn’t. Keep reading.
First trauma disruption. A safe adult intervened in Ayantu’s life. A police officer intercepted her on the streets as she fled yet another terrible living arrangement. His training in Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) made this a trauma disruption for Ayantu—not an additional trauma.
The officer brought her to a home for girls in Addis Ababa called the AGCI & Tim Tebow Foundation House of Hope. Twenty highly-trained local team members staff the home (a.k.a., adults who have done the hard work to pursue their own healing. Healed people heal people).
Arriving here does more for Ayantu than simply get her out of the trafficking network. It slowly restores her ability to trust adults and believe they can act in her best interest. This step is massive.
But her healing journey has just begun.
Understandably, Ayantu feels afraid and angry. She won’t look anyone in the eye or speak unless spoken to. Her defenses are up to protect herself from the instability and deception that still feels so fresh.
Second trauma disruption. Staff develop a full-scope plan specific to Ayantu’s needs and informed by TBRI. Trauma’s despair takes its own unique shape in every child, demanding personalized attention to heal.
Caregivers give her time to heal at her own pace in a safe and predictable environment. They stay gently relentless when Ayantu withdraws or expresses reticence.
The ultimate goal? Help Ayantu heal and connect her back to her family.
Months go by. Little by little, Ayantu looks up, smiles more. They see her trauma symptoms begin to ease.
She bonds with others, especially one caregiver present to Ayantu in daily routines and one-on-one conversations. This woman tends to Ayantu’s emotional, physical, and spiritual needs. A deep bond develops between them—one that disarms Ayantu, allowing her to process her trauma.
Her spirit deepens. She requests to join therapy sessions and spiritual groups instead of staying in her room. One morning, she courageously volunteers to lead a prayer out loud with others. It’s a prayer not just for herself, but for her family and her country. She reclaims her voice and agency.
She learns to read and write in both Amharic and English (game-changer). She even begins to find the learning enjoyable and something she wants to continue when she gets home (bigger game-changer). A whole new world opens up to her.
Ayantu gets to a point where she isn’t just receiving care and healing—she’s giving it to others.
“You are not what happened to you,” she writes in a homemade card for another girl at the home. “You are strong, and you are loved.”
Once withdrawn and guarded, Ayantu becomes more compassionate than ever before.
And she’s now certain that returning to her parents and sisters will provide her with sustaining love, care, and stability for the long haul.
But it’s been years since she’s seen her family. What will it be like to return? How could they ever understand what she’s been through?
Read about the next pivotal step in Ayantu’s healing journey, as documented by All God’s Children International, here.
But before you go check that out, let us say thanks again for joining the heal by joining the TDC.
The world needs a lot more people like you. Girls like Ayantu need more people like you.
Every month, expect to receive a new way to get empowered and stay inspired about disrupting trauma. We’ll even give you ways to put your knowledge into action.
Because by healing children, we can heal the world.