A young girl in Sierra Leone prostitutes herself on the street. The Salesian missionaries have offfered a home, food and shelter to the many youth living on the streets of this poor African ccountry. Credit: snapshot from LOVE documentary. ROME β While journalists often get bogged down in the failures and weaknesses of the Catholic Church, there are times when compelling examples of service, mission and faith should get the attention they deserve. Aminata, identified only by her first name, had her first sexual experience at Essentially an orphan, her grandmother was too old and sick to take care of her, leaving her no choice but to survive on her own.
It captures the work of Salesian missionaries in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, in helping hundreds of girls forced into prostitution by poverty, misery or neglect. Francis de Sales β were founded by Italian St. John Bosco in to help youth struggling in poverty.
Between and , Sierra Leone went through a bloody civil war that resulted in over , deaths. Ebola decimated the country further in , resulting in four thousand dead. One of the main results was an abundance of orphans, some having survived Ebola themselves and living with the stigma associated with it. Many of these youths, some as young as nine, have turned to prostitution as an easy way to make money. Salesian Father Jorge Crisafulli, director of the center, said that when he found the first girls and brought them back to the mission, he was surprised not only by their poverty and hunger but also by the fact that, despite all the things they had gone through, they were still just children.
He said that percent of the girls carry STDs, since most of their clients refuse to use protection, and some even have the HIV virus or Hepatitis B. Nor can they rely on the police, which often employs brutality and violence to clear the streets. The Salesians offer the only refuge for the girls. Since the shelter was founded in September , over girls have been extracted from a life of prostitution and reunified with their families or adoptive ones.
That was the case for Aminata, who at the end of the documentary we see transformed, made anew, living with her grandmother and learning to become a hairdresser.
