The discussions on the possibility of breaking the pactOne of the most delicate steps of the action undertaken by the institutions thatoperate in the field is represented by the moment that the victim foresees thepossibility to break the pact and eventually enter into the programme of guaranteedaccompaniment envisaged by Art. 18. The discussions - generally made by a groupcomposed of social operators, cultural and psychological mediators - are normallyof short duration: one or two meetings to verify the real determination of the victimand to avoid second thoughts which are very frequent. The most problematicelement of this phase is, in nearly all the testimony collected by the operators, theopportunity to file a report, that the major number of institutions, in agreement withthe Police and magistrates, consider being the privileged path to accede to the exitprogramme. We will speak about this again in the following paragraphs, but t<strong>here</strong>are also other difficulties.Generally, the first and major difficulty encountered by the operators is the fearof the victim for the consequences of a transgression of the pact sealed by thewodoo rite. Above all, the victim must be given all the material reassurances on theprotection she will receive (her placement safely in a “house of escape”, ifnecessary, her being taken care of in economic, health, legal terms, etc.). But it alsodeals with supplying a surplus of moral, psychological and in some cases spiritualreassurance, regarding the sense of treachery of a pact which often morally obligesthe victim not only towards the exploiters, but also towards the family and moregenerally towards the community to which she belongs.This delicate phase of accompanying the girl towards the decision to turn herback on the life she is living comes about in different forms and with a greatdifference between the lay organisations and those of more marked religiousinspiration. While in the first case the working means prevalently emphasises theprospect of gaining freedom and self-determination, in the second the means areprevalently a relationship which hinges on the emotive elements of faith and thesense of belonging to the community of the faithful: this last means finds strongreciprocity in spirituality and in the community vision of the existence of theNigerians.In other terms the reassurance coming from the faith has proved, to manyNigerian victims, to be an efficacious functional substitute for the pact whichobligates towards the community, so as to configure itself subjectively as aconvincing defence against physical and moral ills, feared for the transgression ofthe wodoo pact, an unassailable protection against curses.In some cases the antagonism between the Christian faith and wodoo isfundamental in determining the success of the exit path by the victim. Thissituation has a Christian sub-stratum which gets the upper hand against the animistbelief, thanks to the change in the context of life and to the weakening of the familyand cultural bonds with the country of origin: “I was always afraid of thesewodoos, but now I go to church, I no longer am frightened of these things. Whenone believes in the Bible, if you are frightened read the Bible, your fear will pass”(Interview Victim No.2).
On this point t<strong>here</strong> is a strong agreement on the points of view of the socialoperators, whether of a lay type or of religious inspiration. Faith and liturgy seemto have a very important role in accompanying the victims of Nigerian origintowards liberation. Not only do they “dip into the same imaginary symbol andritual” - as also recognised by a psychologist of lay orientation - but theycontribute to restore the sense of belonging to a “new family”, and cancel thesolitude experienced and the crisis of identity of the woman, which appear at themoment that the important links to their own community of origin seem to be less.For this reason the idea of a “counter-rite”, that came out of an interview as apossible prospective to liberate the woman from the belief in wodoo, seems to bereductive. The operators appear to concur on the fact that it is the experience livedand shared by faith to un-snare the mechanism of blind obedience to the pact.According to the testimony of a religious person who for many years operatesin support of Nigerian victims: “The mechanism, [of exiting the logic of wodoo,Ed.] starts when they realise, as is said, that God is stronger than wodoo. Thesecond element which should start is that they feel loved by God (…) because thiselement of their spirituality is so strong that it is impossible to cancel it and verymuch affects their choices” (Caritas Servizio Migranti - Turin).A religious operator observes that for the Nigerian women do not considerCatholicism as the westerns: “What is important is the concept of good; he whodoes good, cannot be badly paid”; the women, even those that do not pray, “havesolid principles tied to tradition and to the culture of origin: they have morals, arevery severe, even with us nuns” (Caritas - Udine).Besides the psychological dimension, the operators emphasise also in this phasethe difficulty to collect reliable and circumstantial elements on the stories, ties, andaspirations of the victims, to not speak about the news useful to sustain a penalcomplaint to the persons who exploited them. The difficulty to reconstruct the realidentity and name of the exploiters, the code of silence attitude sometimes on thepart of the victims, the fact that often at the time of the complaint the circumstancesof the exploitation have changed (possibly because the madam has alreadyescaped): are all situations that can prolong or make investigations useless andlengthen the time to obtain the permission to stay.Obligation to denounce or only adhesion to the social project?Even if in some geographical areas (for example, Naples, Caserta, Rimini) theconceding of a permission to stay is frequent for reasons of social protection,through the paths, without complaint, the most widely used practise is that whichsees the complaint as a “master way” to obtain a benefit.It should be noted that the tie to the existence of filing a report, as a condition toaccede to the social protection and integration programme, is significantly decisiveon matters of overcoming the experience. The path which passes through filing acomplaint is longer, complex, risky, and sometimes lived by the woman as animposition and a violence. Under the psychological profile, it is a painful job toreview her own experience and a complex attempt, which does not always produce
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TRAFFICKINGOF NIGERIAN GIRLSTO ITAL
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F O R E W O R D1. Objectives and st
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and who have identified the most si
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on the other hand, for those involv
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Case files analysed: Preventive det
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Table 2 - Socio-economic situation
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Table 3 - Nigerian citizens regular
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Table 5 - Social protection permiss
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Table 7 - Number of persons charged
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Table 8 - Detainee population sub-d
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and the United States enables this
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C H A P T E R IW a y s a n d p h a
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Figure No.2 - Edo State.It is not c
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Nigeria. From 1996 in Benin City an
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In this variegated framework, the d
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“Benin City is one of those State
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Various privileged witnesses of the
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In the first years of the traffic o
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pay considerable sums for lodging,
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The routesWe find at least three ty
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Figure No.5 - Trafficking routes th
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The journey overland through Africa
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new dispositions and contacts to co
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Then he sends her in a taxi to the
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T. remains in this house for 21 day
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detainees go towards the refectory,
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At this point the organisation esco
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was accepted by the Ivory Coast pol
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B.E. «Yes, I was given a Ghanaian
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