Our partnership with Freedom Firm

There are approximately 3 million commercial sex workers in India, of which an estimated 40% are children. Their families often allow them to accept the promise of a good job in the city or to venture to metropolitan areas alone in order to make money for the family. Due to the economic strains on families, parents themselves will sometimes sell their daughters into prostitution out of financial desperation.

Our partner Freedom Firm seeks to eliminate child prostitution in India by providing rescue, restoration, and justice for survivors of sex trafficking. Their goal is to operate in areas where little anti-trafficking work is being done. They focus on smaller cities with large red-light districts that lack the resources and training to counter trafficking. For our second project with Freedom Firm, we tackled rescue, restoration and justice operations in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. In the first phase of the project, undercover operatives located girls in brothels and documented the crime. The Freedom Firm team, along with the police, raided the brothels, rescued the girls, and arrested the brothel keepers and traffickers. The survivors were then placed in homes such as Meerut Government Shelter Home, where the aftercare team was given permission to provide life skills training, counseling, and therapy. In the final phase, Freedom Firm actively pursued the conviction of those responsible for trafficking minors. The legal team made sure criminal complaints were filed against the girls’ oppressors. Rescued girls are empowered to testify against their abusers and help bring them to justice. Every trial and every conviction creates a deterrent and raises the cost of sex trafficking in India.