Friday, 20 Dec 2019 06:00 PM MYT
“You feel like the worst criminal in the world. ‘What does garbage like you come here for? Why not stay in your own country?’ they told me. I wanted to respond, but since they were police, I kept quiet,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. It is a link that Brazil promised to study in its 2018 plan to combat human trafficking, after introducing tougher penalties for the crime in 2016.
“As conditions in neighbouring countries worsen, for example in Venezuela... the trend is for to grow,” said Carolina Vieira, a lawyer for ITTC, who helps women freed from jail get key legal documents like social security cards. While human trafficking victims have the right to an acquittal if they are forced to commit a crime, legal experts said it can be hard to prove the element of coercion.
“From that point on, I just continued with the whole thing. They told me this was nothing compared to what would happen to me if I got out.”