Discovering Holding Hands

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 Holding Hands is a project started by a group of dedicated volunteers, who are passionate about giving a platform to women who have been a victim of human trafficking and/or forced prostitution.  

Our goal is to raise awareness and financial support for women that left prostitution, or are stepping out of it while being supported by Cherut Belgium vzw (an organisation based in Antwerp that support women working in window prostitution), and to ask attention for the life stories of women working in prostitution. We don’t want to give our own perspective, but merely be the means by which these women can share their own stories. We want to make way and use the tools we have available to amplify their voices.  

 Many women and transgender people did not choose to work behind the windows or had very limited options. These are people you will not hear talking on the radio or in television programs about prostitution. They often don’t even speak the language of the country they are working in. Their vulnerability has been exploited and they lack or used to lack the freedom to make decisions about their own life. 

Even though there are plenty of windows in the red-light district to look at the women working there, we don’t see much of their lives when we walk past. With our exhibition, we want to make people stop and truly see them. We want to offer a platform for them to share their own stories, in their own words.  

Holding Hands is a one of a kind exposition and it´s an honour for us to share these stories with you. 

We have interviewed seven women, from Latin-America, Africa and Europa, who have in different ways been forced to work in prostitution. All of them told us haunting stories of survival and perseverance. Now that they live a free life again, they are ready to share what they have been through. 

We asked them questions about their youth, about the way they got forced into prostitution and about what happened next. The conversations were done in a private setting, heart-to-heart, with tears but also hugs and smiles. 

All seven women wish to remain anonymous, but allowed us to take pictures of their hands while they told us their story. 

We decided to name the exposition ¨Holding Hands¨ because of these intimate pictures of their hands, but also because  some stories are too big for words. Sometimes all we can do is just hold hands. 

 Marisca, born in The Netherlands, has been living and working in Barcelona for the last 5 years and recently moved back to Belgium. She is now working as a relationship and sex therapist. During her Bachelor studies in Belgium, she started to work as a volunteer with Cherut Belgium vzw. As a street worker, she got to know many incredible women in the red-light districts of Belgium. She visited the women working in the windows in Ghent every saturday evening and worked for one year full time in the safehouse in Antwerp as a caregiver. After moving to Barcelona the wish to share the stories that she kept in her heart became stronger and stronger. This exhibition is her dream come true.  

 Elisabeth (Liesje) Van Gulck, born in Belgium, is a life coach, trainer, project freelancer and singer-songwriter who has volunteered in Cherut’s outreach team in Antwerp for the past 10 years. She is passionate about people’s freedom from coercion and exploitation. That is why she joined the project Marisca had been dreaming of for a long time, to give the stage to the many women who have worked behind the windows and hear their stories. 

Together they gathered a team of photographers, graphic and interior designers and music composers to be able to give Holding Hands the professional platform it deserves. 

The project is 100% funded by donations. Thanks to the generous support of many interested people, the project has become a reality.  Please consider to send a donation our way, so we can continue organising expositions and bring these stories all over the world. 

 I have always dreamed of making the world a better place. It sounds so naïve and idealistic, when reality hits me every day with so much incessant and senseless suffering. And yet, I do carry those dreams in my heart.

In spite of reality, I am deeply convinced that we as humans have a limitless capacity for creative thinking, for new solutions and different viewpoints, even if we may not live long enough to see the end result. It makes me think of Gaudi, who conceived the Sagrada Familia even when some of the technology needed to build it didn’t exist yet. That is called faith: the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.

As some of you know, I have been pretty passionate about the subject of human trafficking and sexual exploitation for a long time. I have learnt a lot about those realities volunteering as a member of Cherut Belgium’s outreach team in Antwerp’s Red Light District for the past almost 12 years. There are more people being trafficked now than ever before in history. No one knows the exact numbers, but the ILO reported at least 40,3 million victims in their 2017 report. Even the UN or other agencies come with their best estimates, because different countries report differently, and so many people just disappear and are never reported missing. Moreover, the UNODC’s 2022 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons states clearly that the COVID-19 pandemic led to less data gathering, less reporting, and less prosecution of perpetrators. In Europe, a child disappears every two minutes, and some of them will inevitably be trafficked. It is highly uncomfortable to know and read and hear, but it is reality. However strong our resistance to accepting this reality may be, I know these stories are real, because I have spoken to people who have lived them. There are many recorded testimonies of what happens, and that is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg. 

My experience in talking to victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation is that they often either lie or tell an incomplete story while they are still in it, and had rather forget what happened to them once they get out. Just to be very clear: human trafficking is much more than sexual exploitation. Here is the UNODC’s definition of human trafficking: “Human Trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit.” This can be in forced labour, organ trafficking, forced marriages, forced participation in criminal activity, being forced to be a child soldier, debt bondage and sexual exploitation, and other ways.

Human trafficking does not require crossing international borders. An alarming number of young people are being trafficked via social media and in their own social circles. And no, they are not necessarily socially vulnerable people. Even older people get deceived by very intelligent traffickers. And some people look for traffickers because the situation they are in is so dire that they think this will lead them to a better future in the long run. This does not mean that therefore they are not victims of trafficking. The UN is clear on that, as the aim of profit is still at play.

In my years of outreach with Cherut Belgium in Antwerp, I have seen men, women and people identifying as other gender identities, pimps, drug dealers, shopping boys, traveling salesmen and women, who all find themselves in this microcosmos of the world of prostitution. In spite of really good work and real effort from the Cel Prostitutie, a special unit of Antwerp’s police force, a lot of criminal activity is hard to prove when victims and witnesses are unwilling to speak up, often for good reason. No, not all of the people there are victims of human trafficking, but at least several are. A smiling face behind a window does not mean that smiling face is free. 

Over these years, I have been wondering how we break the devastating and destructive cycles of people stuck in very sad and dire situations. I have come to understand that it is not just about human trafficking, exploitation and abuse. How come human trafficking is even able to continue? We throw billions at scientific research and are able to do and develop the most incredible technologies. Then how come this is still a problem? It all starts with how we look at the world, and how leaders look at the world. Is it a place of connection or a place of scarcity? If scarcity is the baseline, conflict, fear and abuse result. And if leaders work from a place of scarcity and fear, they will make sure they hold on to power, even if that means others fall victim to poverty, therefore confirming and strengthening the scarcity worldview on a large scale. Fear that has the last word has never led to peace and sustainable solutions. And call me naïve, but I want to challenge this system in which we remedy what is already systematic without addressing the root cause. That is why I write this today, to challenge maybe one person’s outlook.

I dream of being a part of a band of people who are willing and hopefully able to move the needle by going where systemic change can be made, while continuing to care for and help those in need. And until that time, I will continue to raise awareness, tell more stories and make more people uncomfortable. Why? Because we are all human and because I believe we all have value.