Imagine that you are a seven-year-old girl and you are being made to do things that you don’t want to do. This was my situation eleven long years ago… Let me tell you my story. My name is Laila. I am from Afghanistan. I was seven years old when my real mother put me into prostitution for money. I could not spend my childhood like other children. I was not allowed to go to school. I could not wear a school uniform, and there was no one to give me a pen. Instead of a pen, my mother, brother, and stepfather slapped and forced me to go out and be with strange men so that I could bring back money for them. I was beaten very badly if I did not obey them. There was no one to support me or to help me get out of the terrible life I was living. I felt hopeless. I thought everything in my life was finished and there was nothing to look forward to. But I was wrong. After my mother went to prison, Women for Afghan Women (WAW) took me to one of their Children’s Support Centers. I was scared …
Children's Support Centers
Some Afghan Children Find an Alternative to Jail — for Now
Published in The New York Times, 12/30/2017 By Rod Nordland Kabul, Afghanistan — On visiting days in the women’s wing of Pul-e-Charki prison in Kabul, Najia Nasim would regularly see a little girl named Dahlia waiting outside her mother’s cell, standing up straight, wearing a small backpack. Inside the backpack were all of the girl’s clothes and a few personal possessions. Ms. Nasim goes to the prison regularly to look for children who are older than 5, and thus eligible to be freed and put in one of her organization’s orphanages. These are children who are in prison only because their mothers are there, with no one else in their family willing or able to take them. Dahlia was hardly bigger than a toddler, but her mother claimed she was 5, which Ms. Nasim did not believe; 4 at most, she said. “Her mother would always say, ‘The last time when you didn’t take her, she cried all day.’ She begged me please take her,” Ms. Nasim said. Their orphanages were not equipped for children …
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