the mission of the nuns to rescue girls from sexual slavery

At the head of the work of the religious Mary Queen of Heaven Missionaries (MQHM) is its founder, Sister Corazón J. Salazar. Currently, the 16 nuns of the congregation go into remote areas and rural villages to fight against trafficking, tear them out of prostitution, offer them education and work. Extreme poverty, one of the causes of exploitation.

Manila () – Save young girls, often also girls, from sexual slavery and exploitation for prostitution. This is the mission of a group of Filipino nuns from Cebu, which began in 1996 in the Central Visayas region, and who have made the fight against trafficking and extreme poverty their way of bearing witness to Christ and contributing to the development of the society. The group is led by Sister Corazón J. Salazar, a businesswoman who later embraced the consecrated life and founded the order of the Missionaries of Mary Queen of Heaven (MQHM), and who has worked for some time together with six other religious.

It was founded as a Catholic association in the year 2000 by the work of Card. Ricardo J. Vidal, former Archbishop of Cebu. Later it became a public association of the faithful within the archdiocese on August 22, 2003, the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary Queen. Now the religious institute relies on the work of 16 sisters, who reach out to remote areas and rural villages with the help of lay people, priests and members of the local communities. The sisters’ goal is to help suffering children by providing them with an education, opportunities for redemption, and trust in God and neighbor.

Southeast Asia, and the Philippines in particular, are among the areas in the world with the highest exploitation of girls and young women as prostitutes; extreme poverty fuels situations of vulnerability and commodification, especially in rural areas. A panorama confirmed by Sister Salazar, according to which situations of poverty and abandonment push young women -often between 8 and 15 years old- towards the sex industry, where they are exploited and, in some cases, even killed. The nuns’ intervention strategy is divided into two parts: the first is to free them from slavery; then they try to guarantee them education and schooling, to reintegrate them into society by helping them find a job with which they can live with dignity.

Because of their work, the nuns are considered “angels of mercy” who walk through dark alleys at night to get girls out of the red zones. “We save girls and victims of sex trafficking,” continues Sister Salazar, “who are reduced to prostitutes” while they wait or search the streets for “clients” who exploit them only to receive in return “a small remuneration” that they use to “support the needs of their families.” The poorest of the poor have fallen prey to torturers who roam the deserted rural areas, promising their parents “a good job in the city” as bar dancers or tour escorts.

The sisters have designed a two-phase rehabilitation to address the immediate needs of the girls, desperate for a way out. The first is at the “Home of Love” rehabilitation and training center in Bagasawe, Tuburan, Cebu. It offers accommodation and food, health, psychological assistance, spiritual and professional or school training, candle making, making scapulars and rosaries, and child care for young mothers with children. The second phase is in Regina Coeli, where the nuns have placed more than 550 families to provide education to the most disadvantaged and stop sex trafficking. Recently, the nuns rescued three sisters between the ages of 14 and 17 from prostitution networks, who had already been victims of abuse by their relatives and abandoned by their mother.