This document summarizes a webinar discussing research on the experiences of children returning home after experiencing sexual exploitation. The webinar included presentations from researchers in Cambodia and India on their longitudinal studies following children for years after leaving protective care. Their findings showed that children had mixed feelings about returning home, worrying about stigma and lack of freedom. They hoped for acceptance from family but often faced pressure to marry without continuing their education. The webinar discussed challenges with reintegration including lack of access to continued education or skills training, as well as lack of participation in decision making about their futures. Overall, the research highlighted both the hopes and difficulties children face when returning home after exploitation.

1. Going home: how do children feel about - and
what are the experiences of children - going
home?
19th September, 2012

2. Programme
 Welcome and introduction.
 Presentation from Siobhan Miles, Research
Coordinator of the Butterfly Longitudinal Research
Project for Chab Dai, Cambodia.
 Q&A session
 Presentation from Claire Cody, Oak Fellow at the
Centre for Rural Childhood/ Dr Ranjita
Biswas, Research Coordinator Jadavpur University.
 Q&A session.
 Close

3. Elluminate Introduction
Audio
 The first thing you need to do is make sure that the audio on your
computer is set up. In order to do this click on the „Tools‟ heading and
then „Audio‟ and „Audio Setup Wizard‟ and following the instructions.

4. Elluminate Introduction
 On Elluminate only one person can speak at a time. In order to be
heard by the other participants, you must click on the microphone
icon in the bottom left hand corner of your screen.
 When you‟re finished talking, remember to unclick the microphone
icon. While your microphone is yellow, no one else will be able to
speak!

5. Elluminate Introduction
 You will see the
participants list in the
upper left hand corner of
your screen.
 In this window you will
also be able to see who is
talking as their
microphone will be
highlighted in yellow.

6. Elluminate Introduction
 Although only one person is allowed to speak at a time there are ways to communicate
while you are not the speaker. This can be achieved through the chat box.
 If you have any questions that you would like to ask the presenters, we would ask that
you write them in the chat box and they will be asked by the moderator during the
question and answer session.

7. ‘Going home: how do children feel about - and what
are the experiences of children - going home?’
Findings from the Longitudinal Butterfly
research in Cambodia.
Monti Datta , Heang Sophal, Lim Vanntheary, Glenn & Siobhan
Miles, Orng Long Heng, So Dane

8. Background and Introduction
 Chab Dai - Cambodia is a faith based coalition of 50
plus organisations working on issues to do with
trafficking and migration.
 The Butterfly Longitudinal Research is following 128
participants over a ten year period to find out about
their experiences in care and their experiences of
reintegration.
 The research commenced in 2010.
 Partnering with 13 organisations (gatekeepers) in
order to gain initial access to potential participants

9. Longitudinal Approach
• Methodology.
• Mixes methods-
quantitative surveys
and qualitative
interviews and
activities.
• Three visits per year.

10. Participant Profile: Gender-2011

11. Participant Profile: Age-2011

12. Participant Profile: Ethnicity-2011

13. Participant Context: Context -2011

14. Key findings from 2010-2011 to do with
anticipation, perceptions and experiences of
returning home

15. Anticipations and Perceptions from 2010-2011

16. Desire for education and skills training 2011
 “We must study to one day have a good job. When we are
illiterate we don‟t fit into society because we cannot find a
good job or make good friends. Poor people always believe
the people who cheat them and take advantage of them like
the trafficker and the gangster.” (In-depth interview, female in
residential programme)
 “I want to learn to read Khmer so no one will cheat me
anymore.” (Focus group discussion, female in residential
programme)
 Desire to attend university – males (67%) and females (43%)
 Desire to do skills training – females (30%) and males (6%)

17. Preparing to Leave the Shelter

18. Anticipated Worries About the Future
(Girls FGD-7/10)
 Stigma/ Prejudice/ Shame sexual exploitation associated
with dishonour and shame of being poor.
 Family debt/ Cycle of poverty
 Peer pressure/ wrong crowd- influence and being
deceived.
 Having to forgo educational/skills training opportunities
because families cannot afford it.
 Can‟t afford health care when they get sick.
 Will be lonely and no one will understand or be able to
comfort them.

19. Hope For Their Futures
 Sisters and mothers will be “understanding”.
 Acceptance/Honoured (earned through education/
good employment/ good family)
 Respectable and adequately paid work.
 Good friends and family
 Complete education/skills training leading to gain
good employment.

20. Males Specifically Spoke about the impact of
Potential Negative Peer influence

21. Preparing to Leave the Shelter

22. Strengths/ Protective Influences
(Boys FGD – 2/11)
 “Good” relationships – family, friends – “a lovely
family where there is love and where there is
unity, joy, peace – family which love and forgive each
other.”
 Education/ Skills “An education is good because it leads
to getting good job so I can support myself and my
family.”
 Personal own “good” character:
 “ We need to take responsibility for our wrong doings.”
 “I need to respect my elders and obey parents.”
 “ A boy needs to be kind and do acts of charity to others.

23. Challenges/ Potential Harm
(Boys FGD- 2/11)
 Bad relationships, family and friends:
 “It‟s bad if my family gossip to others about my past.”
 “He will meet bad friend and persuade him to sniff
glue and he will become an addicted drug person.”
 “He will skip school with his bad friends and people
will fight him.”
 Lack of education/ skills:
 Result in being unable to find good jobs and
therefore unable to support their families.

24. Perceptions and Experiences 2011

25. Reintegrated – in past year – 2011
 Disappointment education compromised.
 Worry and stress education will be compromised due
to lack of funds and other responsibilities or
priorities.
 Stigma/gossip by community – for having been
away.
 Trust and maintaining secrets.
 Marriage/relationship issues.
 Migration issues – needing to find work

26. Question and Answer Session

27. Look at us with Respect
Perceptions and experiences of reintegration:
The voices of child survivors of sexual exploitation
and practitioners in West Bengal and Jharkhand
School of Women‟s studies, Jadavpur University
Commissioned by the Centre for Rural Childhood, Perth
College, University of the Highlands and Islands and funded by the
Oak Foundation

28. Background to Research
 Commissioned in 2011
 Carried out in the two adjoining states of West
Bengal and Jharkhand in India
 To learn more about reintegration needs and
support offered

29. Respondents
• Interviews with practitioners from NGOs and CBOs
(n=36)
• Interviews/FGDs/ group interviews with survivors in
the community (n=33)
• FGDs with survivors in shelter homes (n=49)
• Interviews with shelter home staff (n=5)
• Interviews and FGDs with family members (n=19)
• Interviews with government (n=4)
• Group interview with community group (n=3)

30. Challenges
The sample
• The sample was purposive and convenient with CBOs
acting as gatekeepers
• No boys
• In Jharkhand - difficult to access survivors
Other challenges
• Maintaining confidentiality
• Language
• Terminology
• Explaining the research

31. Limitations
Limitations of the research findings
• Not representative of the situation for every child
• Bias towards the situation in West Bengal
• Only a partial insight into the current
reintegration work and experiences of children
affected by trafficking for the purposes of sexual
exploitation

32. Key Findings
• Adjusting
• Freedom of movement
• Marriage
• Education
• Livelihoods
• Therapeutic support
• Participation and decision-making
• Training and sensitivity of staff

33. Adjusting
Both practitioners and survivors talked about the problems girls faced in
adjusting to both a shelter setting and to rural living
One practitioner said:
‘There might not be electricity or sanitary napkins available, for
instance. This is not to scare or dishearten her but to give her a reality
check....’
One survivor said:
‘I miss watching television and listening to music. Since we don’t have
electricity we can’t charge our mobile phone batteries at home. We
have to send it to the shop far away where there is electricity. I enjoy
dancing and singing which I can’t do here’.

34. Freedom of Movement
Girls who had returned home spoke of the lack of freedom they
had
One survivor explained why she was not able to meet friends:
‘....my father does not allow me to go out...he is scared that I
might be lost again or that people will talk bad about me’.
Another survivor explained:
‘There was no one with whom we could talk to about our
experiences after we came back home. Our movement inside
the community is very restricted’.

35. Marriage and the Family’s Wishes
Marriage – the ultimate achievement
 Girls appeared to have little say:
‘...he wants me to get married. ... I have no say because it is my
father and brother who decide’.
‘I am getting married soon. My uncle has fixed my marriage’.
 Girls feared making another „wrong decision‟.
‘I’ll do whatever my parents tell me to. I have made a mistake
once and will not do it again’.

36. Marriage and Respect
 A survivor who had married on return:
‘No one can say any bad things about her if a girl is self
dependent. But I am married; I am dependent on my
husband’s income, so I can’t do anything on my own’.
 One survivor felt that girls needed to gain respect and
independence before entering marriage.
‘Parents want to get their daughter married but we don’t
think like that because first she has to fight for lost respect.
After she becomes self dependent, she can think about
marriage’.

37. Education and the Family’s Wishes
Education as a way to „mainstream‟
 Girls who had returned home, when asked whether they
wanted to study, said:
‘Yes but I cannot go to school. My father will not allow’.
‘Yes, but my uncle will not allow’.
‘....I sat for the annual exams but I will have to leave my studies
because my elder brother doesn’t want to me to study, he wants
me to get married. ...’.

38. Other Barriers to Education
Some girls feared the response of returning to the classroom
and questioned the practicalities and benefits of studying:
‘I want to get admitted to class IX in a different school, as my old
friends have gone to higher classes and will ask me different
questions’.
‘I am 16 years now. Who will take me now? I have read only up
to nursery. I don’t like studies’.
‘What will happen if I study? It will not help me to earn. And I will
have to study with younger children of my village and they will
tease me‟.

39. Livelihoods: Centrality and Respect
‘… But we need to earn money. We had gone away because we were
promised work and money. So when we come back, we need that...’.
 Earning money equaled earning respect in the community.
 As survivors engaged in a livelihood programme said:
‘We will prove ourselves and earn that respect so that no one can say
anything’.
‘The work that we will do, we will do it with so much hard work that we
will reach great heights and people will look at us with respect’.

40. Vocational Training
Problems included:
1. Not being able to practice enough as the shelters didn‟t have
enough equipment:
‘There were four machines and we were more than 30 girls, one
sir would teach ... we used to gossip among ourselves’.
2. Being unable to complete training courses that they had
started because they had to return home when told to:
‘I was studying and undertaking a beautician course in the
shelter home, but could not complete the course as I was sent
back to the community’.

41. Vocational Training
3. Forgetting the skills they learnt in the home.
4. Not feeling confident as not having practiced the skills
since leaving the shelter:
‘I remember them. But I am not confident because I have
not practiced them for more than a year after I returned
home’.

42. Vocational Training
5. Not having money to buy the raw materials to
make products to sell:
‘Who will give me the money to make things and
who will buy them’?
6. Not having buyers for their products.

43. Survivors Involved in Family
Business
‘What will I do sitting at home…this is all I can do and my
family members are also doing this…so I joined them’.
 Survivors in the study were involved in:
 Beedi binding
 Unwinding and straightening hairs
 Making fireworks
 Saree printing

44. Developing Group and Micro
Enterprises in the Community
 NGOs reported that developing group enterprises for
survivors was challenging.
 Difficult to get girls to come to a central location for
training and other activities.

45. Other Forms of Support
 As one girl said:
‘This dada from the organisation comes regularly. He talks
to me and my parents. I like talking to him’.
 Another commented:
‘No, nobody came to speak to me. The didis in the Home
showed me the bed. They asked me where my house was
and what had happened to me. I stayed there for two days
and then came back home’.

46. The Child’s Participation and
Decision-Making
 Girls remained marginal in decision-making.
 Decisions were guided and taken by the frontline
workers, parents or other male members in the
family.
 There was a general dependence of the girls and
their families on the organisations to make decisions.
 As one survivor said:
‘I don’t want to take decision for myself. I will leave it
on the NGO dadas and my mother’.

47. Training and Sensitivity of Staff
 As one girl in a shelter home said:
‘They stigmatise us by saying that we don’t have any future’.
 One practitioner noted:
‘Another problem is that after reintegration the follow up is mostly
done by the grass root level local NGOs or CBOs. These local
bodies are not free of social values and beliefs that stigmatise
the girls and so the girls also become a victim of it as these
bodies can often be judgmental of the girl’s habits, lifestyle etc’.

48. Conclusion
 Reintegration is a process involving various social and
economic aspects.
 Children and young people have different needs and
experiences of care and assistance received.
 Contradictions and a divergence in views.
 Examples of positive work.
 Many challenges and gaps that persist.

49. For More Information
 The full report and summary report will be available
soon on www.childrecovery.info.
 Contact Dr Ranjita Biswas, Research Coordinator for
more information [ranjitabsws@gmail.com].

50. Question and Answer Session

51. Working papers
Read more about „going home‟ in our working paper:
‘What do we think we know about…returning home:
one option for children affected by sexual exploitation
and/or related trafficking?’
http://www.childrecovery.info/index.php?id=175

52. Information for the Next Webinar
Integration into a new setting: how do children
integrate following their trafficking experience
and what can we learn from work with other
populations regarding integration?
Thursday 11th October, 3pm London time
 Dr Elżbieta M. Goździak: Director of Research at the
Institute for the Study of International Migration
(ISIM) at Georgetown University.
 Professor Ravi Kohli: Professor of Child Welfare and
Head of Department of Applied Social Studies at the
University of Bedfordshire.

53. While You’re Waiting
 If you are interested in learning more about the
recovery and reintegration of children, who have
been sexually exploited, you can find out more about
interventions and experiences from people working
in the field from our bi-monthly e-bulletins.
 If you would like to receive the e-bulletins please
email claire.cody@perth.uhi.ac.uk to register your
name.
 We have just sent out our latest e-bulletin but we can
send you an email with the latest news from
www.childrecovery.info.