YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – Harold D’Souza and “Bright” live in different worlds. Harold lives in the United States, Bright lives in Ghana, but they have a common story: Both are survivors of human trafficking.

The two individuals shared their heart-wrenching stories at an Oct. 30 webinar organized by the Pan-African Catholic Theology and Pastoral Network (PACTPAN).

Harold was trafficked from India to the United States in 2003 with the promise of a good-paying job of $75,000 per year. He said 50 years ago when he was growing up, every child in India dreamed of travelling to the United States, and he grew up with the same dream.

“Going to America was, and still is, like going to Svarga,” D’Souza said. (Svarga is a Hindu word meaning “Heaven” or “Paradise.”) And so, when the opportunity came in 2003, he grabbed it with both hands.

“The salary and the benefits were a lot of money. I went with my wife and two sons. My sons were 4 years and 7 years old, ’D’Souza said.

Upon arrival in the United States, a different reality presented itself to D’Souza and his family. First, the traffickers took his travel documents and the $1,000 he brought with him, explaining that in the U.S., people don’t carry money around.

“I think that was the greatest mistake I have ever made, ”D’Sousa said.

“We were made to work in a restaurant seven days a week, 365 days a year, with no salary,” D’Souza said.

His wife, who didn’t have a work visa, was made to work on a promised salary of $2,000 per month. But it was never paid, because the trafficker claimed she owed it all for the family’s lodging.

“Labor trafficking in the U.S. happens at restaurants, gas stations, convenience stores, motels,” D’Souza explained.

His trafficker would later tell him to take out a $40,000 bank loan, and despite his insistence that the trafficker who was also his employer pay his salary, the Indian man says he was “manipulated, tricked, and trapped.”

“My trafficker, the owner of a $150 billion dollar company, took me to the bank. I am in the bank manager’s cabin, and in five minutes there’s a check in the name of Harold D’Souza. And then he takes me to his multimillion-dollar house. He takes me to his bar room, puts a Scotch whisky in a short glass, and tells me, ‘Harold cheers, let’s celebrate. You’re a rich man.’”

Even before the first sip of the whisky had reached Harold’s stomach, the trafficker pulled out a note from his pocket and said: “Harold, you owe me this money.”

D’Souza recalls that it wasn’t for just $40,000. “It was much more,” he said.

The trafficker claimed that the money represented what he’d spent to get D’Souza and his family to the U.S.

“In one second, I lost four things: I lost my voice. I lost my courage. I lost my hope, and I lost my freedom,” D’Souza said. The next day, the trafficker cleared whatever money D’Souza had in his bank account.

Then it dawned on him that he had been trapped in debt bondage. D’Souza said he felt like a complete failure, because he saw his son physically abused and his wife sexually abused, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“I felt like I’d failed on 4 P’s.  I failed as a parent. I failed as a provider. I failed as a protector, and I failed as a person.”

When D’Souza’s wife confronted her ‘employer’ to pay her salary and the $1,000 he had taken from her husband, the response was chilling.

“I can call the Immigration Department right now and get you arrested, handcuffed, jailed, and deported,” D’Souza recalls the trafficker telling his wife. And that silenced them.

Such threats, he said, are still used in America even today.

Secondly, immigrants aren’t called by their names. They are called ‘illegals.’

“My trafficker would just snap his finger at me and tell me, ‘Hey, illegal! Come here! My nickname was ‘Illegal.’ So what happens in your mind, body and soul? I thought, I’m a criminal. He told me Americans do not like brown-skinned guys. I was totally brainwashed.”

“But in God’s home, there is delay, there is no denial,” D’Souza said as he explained how things turned around for him and his family. In 2007, the FBI took up his case, and the rest is history.

Overcoming the trauma is something D’Souza still finds hard to do.

“Trauma has no expiry date. We are abused every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, and every year. So till I die, I don’t think I can get out of my trauma. It looks very easy that I’m smiling. I’m walking, I’m talking, but it hurts so much.”

“It is by God’s grace that I survived,” he said.

For ten years, he didn’t want to go public with his story, but then he saw two people he had worked with die in the U.S., they had also been trafficking victims.

“It was God’s call telling me, ‘Harold, rise, get up! You need to be the voice for the voiceless victims.’” He decided to become an advocate for those in similar situations.

“Bright” (she declined to use her real name) is from Nigeria, and she has a similar story of agony and pain. She was tricked into travelling to Ghana, on a similar promise of a good job. She ended up trapped in a prostitution ring.

The 23-year-old single woman used to do menial duties in Nigeria that would give her a meager $6.07 a month. Then in November 2023, a lady introduced her to a network that got people over to Ghana.

“She told me that once in Ghana, I would be paid a good salary and I could even end up creating my own business to become my own boss,” she said.

It was a tempting prospect for Bright, but once she got to Ghana, she discovered that the lady was running a prostitution ring.

“I attempted to run,” Bright recalls, but was reminded that she first had to work and pay the money spent on bringing her to Ghana. The lady claimed she had spent more than 3 million Nigerian Naira (U.S. $1,820).

It was in a remote part of northern Ghana, and so Bright couldn’t run away. She was trapped.

“I had to do the work,” she said. Then she got pregnant, but her trafficker wouldn’t give her respite.

She contacted a man who offered to help her escape from servitude. The man helped her get to the capital Ghana. And there, Catholic Sisters of Charity came to her rescue.

Dziedzorm Abra Adzam, Shelter Manager and Clinical Psychologist at the Human Trafficking Adult Shelter of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, said people such as Bright are provided with “trauma-informed care, psychosocial supports, medical assistance, legal assistance, some spiritual care, and others based on the need assessments.”

Sister Patience Shinombo of Zambia, who works in human trafficking prevention in Africa and beyond, said trafficking is “a violation against human rights, and it is modern day slavery.”

She described it as “a hidden crime” with those involved intent on exploiting their victims.

“The purpose could be for sex exploitation, for labor, for removal of organs, for drug trafficking,” she said.