Reflection for "The Countertraffickers" By William Finnegan

Violence is shown in this story a lot coming from the people that were taken as prostitutes. The girls in this story have to go through a lot of hard times in their lives and one of them was prostitution. This is something that leaves a Permanente emotional scar. This type of experience, however, might make the weak, stronger. Going through hard experiences always helps you get through another experience that is to come. Very hard experiences are not meant to be the ones to keep you from going on in your life and prostitution is one of them. This is an experience that is very hard on people and it shouldn’t be an experience that people are worried about.

I’ve never had to go through any type of violent experience and I am thankful for that. Violent experiences that people have to go through are blackmail and threats with knives and guns. I can relate to this story more than other men might because I am a girl just like them. I know what they feel like when they are taken. I do not know exactly what they are going through but I will never be able to know exactly what they are going through.

In the story the girls are taken and made believe that they are going to have a good paying job. When they realize that they can make money for their children, they accept the job. Later they notice that they were tricked and they are taken to be prostitutes. They suffer a lot in this because the women’s body is shown to a lot of people. They are also beaten and they can do nothing about it. Once of the girls in the story tried to escape their owners. Even though their plan did not work, they later tried again to escape. I really liked this because I showed that they were strong and that they will fight for who they are and try to escape. What I didn’t like and surprised me was that once the girls were able to escape with the help of other people, they wanted to go back. They saw how hard life was with no money, food or shelter and they thought it would be easier in the prostitution home. They wanted to go back and risk dieing. Some of them respected their owners even though the owners didn’t respect them. The ones that respected the owners wanted to go back to them and not leave them. What I think they meant in the story when they said at the end “some things can not be fixed” is that they can finally escape but emotionally they will never be the same. They will be better because they don’t have to go through that life again. What will never be the same is the permanent emotional scars.