“In the Face of Silence “

Elisa was 6 months old when I met her in December 2007. She weighed less than 10 lbs and had beautiful, silky black hair that curled slightly around her tiny skull. Her chocolate-colored eyes overwhelmed her baby face with their hugeness. I wanted to hold her, but the nurse, a gentle nun in a colorless dress and black scarf, quietly intonated that it was best if I did not. I could hardly take my eyes off Elisa until Ricardo Gallego entered the room behind me.

“She is a beautiful baby, eh?” he asked in a thick accent leftover from his days as director of the Sonoran government’s Child Protective Services in Sonora.

“Yes,” I said. Then I noticed it: a stiff cast wrapped around Elisa’s tiny midsection.

I gestured toward it. “Poor baby girl. Was she in an accident?”

Ricardo’s face clouded. As his smile faded, he laid a light hand on Elisa’s forehead and tousled her hair gently. She kicked one foot out and I thought maybe she smiled at his touch.

“It is from her birth father,” said Ricardo.

Ricardo Gallego is the young and courageous director of God’s Haven for Children International, a mission in Nogales, Mexico that rescues and cares for abused children.

He began to tell me in fractured English phrases how they had found Elisa in a house where she was being tormented and abused by her own father, resulting in several broken ribs and potentially life-threatening internal damage.

As I listened, the shock of what Ricardo was saying overpowered all my senses and for a moment I felt like I was falling, fainting inside. I gripped the edge of Elisa’s crib to steady myself, my eyes fastened on her tiny broken body.

“We saved her life,” finished Ricardo. “She will be fine.”

He was smiling now. I was not.

Abused by her own Father… a six-month old infant? What demon possessed the man who would commit this vile crime? And what tragic concept of submission and dependency filled the heart of the mother who would allow this to happen to her own baby?

I met many other children that day in Nogales, Mexico. Ranging from ages 6 months to 12 years old, the girls and boys rescued by GHFCI had the appearance of schoolchildren. Everyone was trimly attired and clean, reminding me of the children I had cared for in day care centers and as a nanny. But contrary to the children I had worked with in my youth, every one of the children at GHFCI had been rescued from sexually abusive parents, relatives or other situations.

They lived in the Haven because, for now, they had nowhere else safe to go.

Though cheerful and comfortable, God’s Haven for Children International was little more than a former private residence converted into a children’s home with brightly painted walls covered in paintings and posters. Some of the posters were simply encouraging reminders that the children were loved, by God and by the Haven workers. Others were carefully-drafted admonitions of good behavior, such as the benefits of sharing and the rules to using the library and school room.

Yet for all this positive energy, the strange, irregular behavior and severe physical injuries evident in new rescues, was enough to keep me aware of the size of the giant the Haven was seeking to slay. Ricardo was indeed a young David, determined to do the work of a hundred men because he had the vision to see that if he did not stand forward and take up this cause, none other would. And his Goliath? The thriving, deadly virus of child sexual abuse in the Borderlands region.

In Nogales, MX, a city that hides no less than fifty (50) houses of child prostitution and pornography, Ricardo and his staff work day and night to bring hope and healing into the lives of the children they rescue. Various international sponsors and religious organizations provide the primary funding for the Haven. Their support makes sure the children always have several solid meals a day, clean clothes and a warm bed at night. However, with a work force including two psychiatrists, rotating caretakers for the children, menial laborers, a lawyer and office staff on payroll, Ricardo sometimes finds the funds running thin at the end of each month.

“We need several thousand dollars a month to run the Haven – minimum,” he told me toward the end of my visit.

At first, the money bowled me over. But as I was driving home, it dawned on me that I, as a single individual with no children to care for, no house to maintain and no staff to pay, require on average $2,000 a month to live on. And here Ricardo was feeding, clothing and providing for not just 14 children, but a full-time staff of no less than ten adults and their families on an income just roughly six times mine! His pleas for funding rapidly became clear to me after I ran these numbers and realized how very little he was really asking for, and how much each dollar was actually doing for the children.

During a television interview for Project Break the Silence, I focused heavily on a statistic that stated that one child in Arizona is abused every hour.

However, in Nogales, MX, Ricardo told me, over 200 boys and girls are sexually abused in their own homes and neighborhoods every day.

That’s nearly ten times the stateside average, and unfortunately on the Mexico side of our borderlands region, the problem gets far less public attention. Not for lack of trying by those who have a heart to change this, however.

After he spoke out against the sex-trafficking of girls in Nogales, Ricardo received death threats on the phone. Still, he persisted, believing that his work with the Haven was not enough and that many more children needed his voice. But sex-trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry, and according to the Oprah Winfrey Show, which recently ran a special on sex-trafficking featuring advocate Ricky Martin, human sex trafficking is the second-largest organized crime in the world.

With powerful men standing against him, Ricardo would have been well within his bounds to give up in his work and focus just on the Haven and the children the Sonoran government sent his way. But his hope was to bring light into the darkest corners of borderland society and expose the criminals in their dens.

So though the death threats continued, Ricardo was not easily silenced…

Until … the day he was driving his wife and child through the streets of Nogales on a shopping trip. As they pulled up to a stop sign, an untraced assailant fired on the van from across the street. The terrifying whir and splinter of the bullets as they passed by his open window and struck a pole behind the van shook Ricardo to the core. Miraculously, no one in the vehicle was injured and Ricardo was able to get his family home to safety.

This sex-trafficking monster is too big for me to fight alone, he realized.

Against his will, Ricardo was forced to keep silent about the sex-trafficking industry in Nogales and instead focus his boundless energies on the work at the Haven and the children under his care.

Today, the faces of the children at the Haven still drift through my mind at times. I find myself dreaming of tiny Fabian and his drooling, toothless grin… the 2 month old girl who fastened her strong baby hand around my fingers and stared silently up at me from her pink blanket…and Gabby, who when asked how old she was, held up three brown fingers and flashed me a starry smile from under dark bangs. These children are the reason people like Ricardo risk their lives every day, and if our nation could only recognize how deeply our own futures are affected by the children of the Borderlands, perhaps more people would join this cause. But until more people do stand forward, Ricardo, his staff, and myself will continue to speak and work for the hope and healing of the next generation.

As we drove away from the Haven that sunny winter afternoon, Ricardo Gallego turned to me from the driver’s seat of his van and said, “Don’t forget to tell people our sign: Cambiamos lagrimas por sonrisas…we turn tears into smiles!”