Warning: this story contains frank language
A tabletop covered with jewelry for sale in the garishly decorated youth room at the Mad City Church offices on East Washington Avenue symbolized freedom for women trapped in prostitution in Thailand, a half world away. Annie Dieselberg, a missionary kid who grew up with a passion for fighting injustice, is fighting the sex for sale trade by offering women dignity and a job. The job is making jewelry.
Her ministry, Nightlight, is one of the ministries supported by Mad City Church. Begun in 2005, it currently employs 81 women. That’s a very small number compared to the 20,000 women who work in the two square block area of Bangkok where she ministers. But a small amount of hope can shine a bright light in a dark, oppresive environment.
Speaking to a small group of several dozen men and women Thursday evening, Dieselberg discussed the realities of Thailand’s $1.2 billion sex-for-sale industry. "Seven out of ten foreign men who come to Thailand will engage in some type of commercial sex," she said. Most of the women involved in the business are tricked into it and then trapped in it by unscrupulous operators.
"Women are being harmed for men’s entertainment," she said, describing how women are often pressured by their families in rural villages to go to Bangkok and find work so that they can send back money to the family. They usually don’t know it involves prostitution. If they do know, they don’t understand the oppressive, dehumanizing environment in which they will be forced to work.
Thailand’s commercial sex trade got its start during the Vietnam war when American troops were sent to Thailand for rest and recreation. After the war ended, the sex businesses found a way to keep attracting the clientele which was contributing such a large amount of the national budget. Americans still make up the largest proportion of customers.
The Nightlight missionaries visit the women in the workplace, develop friendships, and offer them an alternative. "They open up so easy," she said. "We tell them, ‘we can help you; we have a job for you.’" Making jewelry does not pay as much as prostitution, but it pays more than most other jobs available. Currently there are ten women on a waiting list, waiting for new openings.
"It’s called business as mission," she said. "It makes a profit but it’s also working to build God’s kingdom."
Some of her more risky encounters involved not the business operators, but the customers. A few exploded in anger when she made eye contact with them. "They hate us for interupting their fantasy," she said. But sometimes there is an opportunity to talk to the customers, and to let them know that their fantasies are destroying the lives of the women who work in the trade.
One man told her, "well it’s better than working in a rice field." She told him about asking one of the women one day if she worried about being killed. "The woman said, ‘no, if I die and go to hell it would be better than this.’ No woman chooses prostitution unless they have no other choice.".
Some of the women she meets are not Thai. Most often they’re from central Asia. They are in debt to the traffickers who brought them there. They’ve been beaten and threatened and their families may have been threatened. Some of them have been kidnapped but most of them got involved with the traffickers because they were desperate.
"They think it will work and they take a chance.," she said. "It’s much more difficult to help them. They’re very controlled." But two months ago, she said, they were able to rescue two Uzbek women and return them to their families in Uzbekistan.
She describes the ministry that she runs with her husband Jeff as "doing God’s work in the devil’s playground." She believes "it’s one of the darkest evils we are dealing with today. It’s also one of the greatest opportunities for the church."
She said it truly is a faith mission. "You learn that God is powerful. You can’t do it. You have to let go and let God do it. You discover God’s power and God’s presence."
Annie Dieselberg will be speaking briefly during Mad City church’s Sunday morning services, 8:30 and 10:30 at LaFollette High School.