Inconsistency In Criminal Courts Sentencing

By Dave Avran. Published by Free Malaysia Today on 27 October 2012.

First, we saw how it is OK to rape a 13-year-old girl if you’re a star when Court of Appeal president Raus Sharif led the three-man panel in ruling that the jail term for national bowler Noor Afizal Azizan be substituted with a bound over sentence for good behavior for five years.

Now, two brothers are sent to the gallows for killing a burglar. Indonesian brothers Frans Hiu, 22, and Dharry Hiu, 20, were found guilty of murder for defending themselves against a violent robber. The High Court in Shah Alam sentenced them to death on Oct 18.

The brothers were jointly charged with having a common intention in the murder of 26-year-old R Khartic at a shophouse in Sepang on Dec 3, 2010. They were caretakers of the premises.

In her brief judgment, Justice Nurchaya Arshad ruled that the prosecution had successfully proven the case beyond reasonable doubt and sentenced the men to death.

What does “in her brief judgment” mean? How brief is brief? Two human beings are being deprived of their lives. Wouldn’t we require the court to give more substantial consideration than just a brief judgment?

Here are the facts of the case: three guys were inside their room. A burglar tries to break in first through the front door, then through the back door, and finally he climbs through the ceiling and falls into the room. There is so much determination and premeditation on the burglar’s part – he seriously wants to break in.

He then violently attacks the three occupants of the room. One of the occupants runs away. The other two defend themselves, there is a desperate life and death struggle and in the process the robber dies. Now the robbery victims are ironically sentenced to death.

Why not charge them with assault which carries a lesser sentence instead of murder? Criminal intent (Mens Rea) is a vital ingredient in all murder charges. How could the two brothers have entertained such an intention when in fact it is the burglar who had broken into their room and then attacked them?

He must have startled the brothers when he crashed through the ceiling and started attacking them. In self defence, the brothers fought back with their bare hands. They did not have any weapons in their bedroom.

Acting in self defence

The Malaysian Bar Council has weighed in on the issue and said that people should not take the law into their own hands.

Should the brothers not have defended themselves when attacked? The incident involved a robber who had gained illegal entry into a building and was motivated by a predetermined criminal intent.

In such cases, isn’t it instinctive and normal for the occupants to react spontaneously to restrain an intruder who may pose a danger to their lives?

It would be interesting to know which officer in the Attorney-General’s Chambers sanctioned the murder charge, knowing full well that the brothers were acting in self-defence. Don’t the people have a right to self defence in life-threatening situations? This is a seriously worrying question.

Why didn’t the court assign counsel for the defendants for a charge as serious as murder and for which a death sentence was a distinct possibility? The brothers were the only ones who testified in their own defence.

Doesn’t this case and the subsequent the charge reek of a serious defect in our legal system? There have been many similar cases where victims of crime have been penalised but for the sake of this article we will remain focused on this case alone.

Rightfully, several groups are calling for a judicial review into the death sentence imposed on the two Indonesian brothers, with National Crime Prevention Foundation vice-chairman Lee Lam Thye saying that the sentence was too extreme and would have implications on the way people react to situations that involved their own personal safety and security.

MARAH has also started a forum on the subject. There must be consistency and fairness in how sentences are meted out. What were the brothers supposed to do? Wait for the robber to kill them first?

What are we the public supposed to do when someone breaks into our home? What kind of signal is the court giving?

Given the current crime free for all spree in Malaysia, should we all simply give in to the inevitable and just wear t-shirts with a bright red target painted on it?

Visit MARAH Facebook here

Dave Avran is the founder of MARAH (Malaysians Against Rape, Assault & snatcH).

Read more here:

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2012/10/27/whats-the-matter-with-our-judges/

Statutory Rape: Courts sending out mixed signals

Published by The StarOnline on 30 August 2012.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/8/30/nation/11935447&sec=nation

NOW that their trials are over, former national youth squad bowler Noor Afizal Azizan can go on to fulfil the promise of his bright future and electrician Chuah Guan Jiu can focus on his fixed job and many years ahead. Through it all, no one spoke of the 13-year-old girl Noor Afizal took to a hotel to spend the night with, or the 12-year-old schoolgirl who was “coaxed” to go to her 21-year-old electrician boyfriend's flat instead of to school because he said he was too sick to take her.

These were prepubescent girls who were deemed to have consented to sex with the older boys they were dating and Court of Appeal president Justice Raus Sharif wrote in his written judgment that Noor Afizal had not “tricked the girl into submitting to him”.

In the electrician's case, Sessions judge Sitarun Nisa Abdul Aziz also thought the “sexual act was consensual”, even though DPP Lim Cheah Yit recounted how the girl had repeatedly asked Chuah to take her to school. If she did give consent, there was certainly trickery and fraud involved.

The fact remains that the girls were 12 and 13, children barely out of primary school. They are not old enough to be able to legally buy cigarettes, or even obtain medical treatment if they had contracted sexual transmitted diseases.

The law on statutory rape was meant to protect these very girls. Section 375(g) of the Penal Code states unequivocally that a man has committed statutory rape if he has sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 years of age, with or without her consent.

It is rooted in the presumption that girls below 16 have not attained the mental maturity to consent to sex, and this law was enacted to protect children from abuse. It places the onus on those around her to not have sexual intercourse with her, even if she gives consent, because she is not deemed mature enough to give consent.

In other words, the older guys should have known better. Noor Afizal and Chuah were found guilty of raping the underaged girls, but were not jailed. They were bound over for five years and three years respectively on a RM25,000 good behaviour bond.

The public uproar has been over how these young men got away with a slap on the wrist, and how the emphasis has been on not blighting their future.

Our teenagers are growing up inundated with overt sexual messages from the media and the Internet, without the benefit of a full-fledged sex education curriculum, or avenues to get answers. Clearly, our young people are having sex with each other but there is a line drawn by the law. And that is sex with girls below 16 children is off limits, even to their peers.

By letting Noor Afizal and Chuah off lightly, are the courts sending out mixed signals? Are they saying these two girls aged 12 and 13 are capable of giving consent for sex, and are they saying future good behaviour is sufficient punishment for having sex with minors? What is the message that teenage boys and younger men are getting? At the root of it all, this is about protecting our children boys and girls.

A 12-year-old girl was lured by a man twice her age into his flat, and coaxed into having sex with him, and he got away with a promise to behave himself for the next three years. Where does that leave her? What about her worth? What are we doing for these two girls? How do we protect other naive young girls from being sweet-talked by an older teen into a sexual relationship if he knows he could be found guilty of statutory rape but walk away with a promise to behave? If we do not uphold unequivocally our intolerance of sex with underaged girls, what does that say about us?

Related reports:

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/how-does-a-12-year-old-girl-say-no-marina-mahathir/

Adult women especially if they are less educated and financially dependent have problems saying “no” to their boyfriends and husbands sometimes even fathers uncles and brothers. Female employees often have to say “yes” to their bosses or risk losing their jobs. If these women well above the legal age have difficulties in turning away sexual advances what more a 12 or 13-year-old girl? This is why the statutory rape law exists. It presupposes that an underage person cannot have the wherewithal to refuse sex with an older person. Even if the person is only a few years older. And if the younger person is female growing up in a society where men are assumed to always hold more power in any relationship then what choice would she have but to say “yes”?

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2012/08/30/suhakam-alarmed-over-statutory-rape-sentences/

Suhakam has voiced “great concern” over sentences meted out recently on two offenders guilty of statutory rape, saying they may not have protected the interest of the victims. “Whether the rights, protection and best interests, not to mention the future, of our minors have been and will be upheld and safeguarded in cases involving statutory rape is now doubtful in the light of those sentences,” said the human rights commission’s chairman Hasmy Agam.

Hasmy said that Suhakam was alarmed that the consent of the child victims appeared to be one of the mitigating factors in both cases, though he noted that there had been similar sentences in the past in cases of statutory rape committed by young first offenders... He said that the vulnerability of a child was also recognised by the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) “which states, inter alia, that the child by reason of his/her physical and mental immaturity needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection.” “It is also of great concern that the lenient sentences meted out might send the wrong message to would-be offenders, thus would not be an effective deterrence for statutory rape cases,” he argued.

http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/207480

Sebuah NGO yang memperjuangkan hak wanita mempersoalkan kemunasabahan seorang kanak-kanak memberi keizinan untuk melakukan hubungan seks dengan seorang lelaki yang lebih tua. "Di segi perundangan dan moral, bolehkah mereka memberi keizinan itu?" soal Pengarah Eksekutif Pertubuhan Pertolongan. Wanita (WAO), Ivy Josiah, ketika dihubungi untuk mengulas mengenai dua kes penggantungan hukuman yang dijatuhkan ke atas perogol kanak-kanak. Beliau menegaskan bahawa, di segi undang-undang, kanak-kanak di bawah umur tidak boleh memberi keizinan itu dan itulah sebabnya undang-undang seperti Akta Kanak-Kanak 2001 digubal untuk melindungi mereka.

Statutory Rape: One more escapes jail sentence

Published by The Staronline on 29 August 2012.
By Simren Kaur.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/8/29/courts/11931992&sec=courts

Another person has been bound over on a good behaviour bond for statutory rape. This time, it is an electrician found guilty of raping his 12-year-old girlfriend on two occasions last year.

Sessions judge Sitarun Nisa Abdul Aziz ordered Chuah Guan Jiu, now 22, to be bound over for three years on a RM25,000 good behaviour bond. She said the court took into consideration that Chuah was a young, first time offender. “We also considered the fact that the sexual act was consensual and that he is a school dropout,” she said when handing down the sentence.

Sitarun Nisa said that another consideration was Chuah’s future. Chuah, who was wearing a shirt and blue jeans, showed no emotion when the sentence was passed.

The court had on July 20 found him guilty of raping the girl, then aged 12 years and 10 months, at his flat in Air Itam between 7am and 1pm on July 18 last year, and between 2.25pm and 2.45pm the next day.

The offence under Section 376(1) of the Penal Code carries a maximum jail sentence of 20 years and whipping. On Monday, DPP Lim Cheah Yit said Chuah had coaxed the girl into skipping school and following him back to his flat on the pretext of him being sick.

“They were dating and the accused should have protected her but he took advantage of her instead."

She asked him many times to take her to school but he said he felt unwell and took her to his home,” Lim had said when pressing for a deterrent sentence. In mitigation, counsel Yusuf Idris said his client earned RM30 a day and was staying with his parents and a younger sibling. “This is his first offence. He has a fixed job now and many years ahead of him,” he said. Yusuf said his client had repented and urged the court not to impose a custodial sentence in view of Chuah’s age.

The sentencing came in the wake of the case of former national youth squad bowler Noor Afizal Azizan who was bound over for RM25,000 to be of good behaviour for five years after he pleaded guilty to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl.

There was public uproar on Aug 8 when the Court of Appeal allowed Noor Afizal’s appeal against a High Court’s decision to sentence him to five years jail for the offence.

In a written judgment released on Monday, the Court of Appeal said Noor Afizal, who was 19 at the time of the offence, had not been “very much older” than the minor he had consensual sex with, had cooperated with the police, shown remorse, and given a guarantee that he would not commit such an offence again.

Related reports:

http://thestar.com.my/sports/story.asp?file=/2012/8/28/sports/11922113&sec=sports

In a 14-page written judgment http://www.kehakiman.gov.my/directory/judgment/file/M-09-227-10-2011.pdf released yesterday, Court of Appeal president Justice Raus Sharif said Noor Afizal – 19 at the time of the offence and now 21 – had not “tricked the girl into submitting to him”. Sitting with him were Justices K.N. Segara and Azhar Ma’ah...

There was public uproar on Aug 8 when the court allowed Noor Afizal’s appeal against a High Court decision to sentence him to five years’ jail for statutory rape of the 13-year-old girl. In his oral decision, Justice Raus said he agreed with Noor Afizal’s counsel that public interest would not be served if he received a jail sentence when he had “a bright future”.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/rapists-freed-by-courts-match-medical-definition-of-paedophiles/

Both national bowler Noor Afizal Azizan and Chuah Guan Jiu two young men who escaped jail terms despite raping 13- and 12-year-old girls respectively, may be classed as paedophiles according to international medical standards and psychiatrists here, suggesting the courts may have freed sexual predators who might repeat their crime. The World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) categorises paedophilia as “a sexual preference for children boys or girls or both usually of pre-pubertal or early pubertal age ”.

And according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) used by mental health professionals globally, paedophilia is the sexual attraction to pubescent or pre-pubescents aged 13 or younger, and the subject must be 16 or older with the child at least five years younger.

http://news.malaysia.msn.com/regional/bowler-statutory-rape-sex-consensual-court-says

MSN Malaysia readers were vocal in their overwhelming opposition to the verdict. Some of the following comments regarding the case include:

How can a 13 year old girl even know what she is agreeing to? Are judges now sick? How are we to uphold our law if Judges take crime lightly? I think ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS THAT CRIMES ARE FLOURISHING IN this country are because we have judges who are WEAK. -- rightofvictim

Has the girl a bright future too, your honor?? -- ERLISH

Outrageous! Even a world boxing champion was jailed in the US for his trysts with a woman under the age of consent. Oops, but then it was a different court. -- choun young

So what is the message we are getting here? If you show promise in sport, you are above the law? -- Sar3 Ong

Standing up for sex workers is standing up for pimps

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/standing-up-for-sex-workers-is-standing-up-for-pimps-20120618-20k84.html Published by The Age on 19 June 2012. By Caroline Norma.

Prostitutes are not sex workers, they are prostituted women.

ELITE academics in Australia love to profess their support for ''sex workers''. University of New South Wales academic Catharine Lumby in ''Sex is not dirty work'' on these pages pleaded for the media to treat sex workers with more respect, given that prostitution is a legal form of employment in Australia.

Lumby recalls telling her sons over the dinner table to not make jokes about women their friends call ''prosties'', and to remember that feminists and Christians could be condemned for failing to properly recognise prostitution as work.

This idea of prostitution conveyed to the two Lumby juniors is unmistakably a liberal one. In this framing, prostitution is embarked upon by individual women as something akin to a small-business enterprise (women in brothels in Australia are legally recognised as sub-contractors, not employees). While ''sex workers'' might be at the bottom rung of the social ladder in terms of education, prior victimisation, social networks, and personal asset bases, liberals see them as admirable for attempting to improve their circumstance, and possibly give their kids a better chance in life.

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In conveying this idea of prostitution, Lumby teaches her sons to be nice to ''sex workers'', which is indubitably a charitable thing for an elite academic to do.

However, in framing prostitution as a benign form of ''work'', Lumby also disenables her sons taking social and political measures against the sex industry and its customers as perpetrators of serious and widespread harm against women in Australia.

There now exists a mountain of empirical research, not only from feminist social scientists, but also from psychologists, clinicians, nurses, anthropologists and economists, of the harms of prostitution for women. These harms include post-traumatic stress disorder, genital and other physical injuries, pregnancy, depression and anxiety, and social isolation.

It has been known since the late 1970s that a major precursor of women's entry into prostitution is childhood sexual abuse. There is also empirical evidence of the damage to women's social status, and the negative impact on women's connection to local community, of the sex industry.

Overwhelmingly, the social science and health literature condemns prostitution as a source of harm to women, as well as children.

For liberals to successfully frame prostitution as ''work'', rather than commercially mediated sexual abuse, they must close their eyes to this evidence. They must also avoid encountering most women in prostitution - even the most conservative demographic studies of this population find that half would leave the sex industry if they could. And they must overlook the good results that governments in Sweden, South Korea, Norway and Iceland have achieved in declaring prostitution a violation of gender equality, and criminalising the sex industry and its customers.

Most significantly, though, liberals must avoid mentioning pimps, traffickers, and sex industry customers in making their argument that prostitution is a legitimate form of work for poor women. Lumby doesn't breathe a word of the profit-making activities of pimps in Australia, nor the acts perpetrated by sex industry customers who buy women in half-hour blocks. She fails to tell her sons about the strategies of violence, debt and intimidation that pimps use to keep women in prostitution, and to make sure they service customers with a smile.

She also omits to mention the kinds of sex acts customers do to women in prostitution, and the misogynistic abuse and brutality that women face when they're dispatched to the hotel rooms and houses of prostitution buyers.

These inconvenient facts cause liberals great difficulty in selling the message that prostitution is work. In light of these facts, prostitution begins to look like a system of hush money paid to pimps to supply men with vulnerable women for sexual use and abuse.

When elite academics like Lumby publicly declare their allegiance to ''sex workers'' they concurrently reveal a loyalty to pimps and sex industry customers. They do this through framing prostitution as ''work'', and therefore sending the message that no policy or community action need be taken against the sex industry as an employer of women and legitimate business sector.

In this atmosphere, pimps and their customers are able to continue their harmful activities, and the sex industry in Australia is able to profitably expand and diversify.

On the other hand, when elite academics like me declare our support for ''prostituted women'', we declare a commitment to elimination of the sex industry. We work towards public recognition of prostitution as a social harm through public awareness campaigns highlighting the effects of the sex industry on individual women, and women's social status.

Just like the anti-smoking campaigns that began in the 1970s, we seek a reorientation of the public's thinking about prostitution towards a critique of the ''pretty woman'' and ''happy hooker'' stereotype. Australian policymakers and community leaders mobilised against the tobacco industry in the past three decades, and we seek similar government action against the sex industry as a driver of social harm.

The criminalisation of pimps and sex industry customers is a necessary first step towards this goal, but we also call for public education about the reality of prostitution, as well as policy planning for programs and initiatives to assist women to leave the sex industry and build lives that reflect their worth as full citizens.

Dr Caroline Norma is a lecturer in the school of Global Studies, Social Science & Planning at RMIT University.

Oldest Profession, or Oldest Oppression? Ohio Judge Creates Court for Abused Prostitutes

Published by Christianity Today on 1 June 2012. By Amy L. Sherman.

"God, I realize that being a judge is a very unique position. Not many people get this opportunity. Can you show me some way that I could be significant for you in my work?"

About nine months later, Herbert, 51, was presiding in arraignment court. A typical procession of domestic violence victims passed before him. "A woman will come in, and she'll have these bright red marks around her neck. Clumps of her hair will be pulled out, maybe she'll have a puffy eye or a broken jaw—it's horrible." After seeing several of these women, the sheriff brought a prostitute before him. "She looked exactly like one of those victims that I'd been seeing," Herbert recounts. It shook up his categories.

Soon after, Herbert began researching the criminology of prostitution. What he learned stunned him. "Around 87 percent of these women are sexually abused, typically starting at around age 8," he explains. "They start using drugs to deal with that trauma around age 12." The girls run away from home or foster care and are dragged by predatory pimps into the commercial sex trade. "They are not in this lifestyle because they are nymphomaniacs who want to have sex with 15 different men a night."

Before, Herbert admits, "I would have said that women engaged in prostitution were involved in the world's oldest profession." Now he considers it "the world's oldest oppression."

Herbert decided to establish a restorative justice program for these women, launching CATCH Court—"Changing Attitudes to Change Habits"—in September 2009 with the support of his colleagues. Traditional treatment and probation had never been successful with this population, Herbert explains. Prostitutes simply cycled in and out of jail. The other judges told him, "If you want to try this experiment, go right ahead.'"

Through the two-year CATCH Court, women are sent to residential rehabilitation programs to detox and receive intensive therapy. Their movements are monitored electronically, they are subject to random drug tests, and they appear before Judge Herbert weekly in the courtroom to report on the progress. "I wish you could see the way they interact with each other," he says. "They all have each other's phone numbers, and they call, and they make meals for each other, and if one's in the hospital, they all go visit her. It's an amazing community."

Read more here: http://www.christianitytoday.com/thisisourcity/7thcity/oldestprofession.html

A Former Sex Slave Finds Freedom As An Entrepreneur

Published by Huffington Post on 21 May 2012.

Pamela Villarreal grew up as a sheltered child in a middle class home in upstate New York. But at age 15, one act of youthful rebellion ended up with her abduction as a sex slave for three weeks and not knowing on a daily basis whether she was going to live or die. By escaping the very day she was supposed to be sent by train to her new "owner" in New York City, Villarreal got the second chance at life she prayed for.

Healing from the traumatic experience didn't come easily. Though her life was no longer in danger, Villarreal couldn't find the comfort she needed in her family, as she had been a victim of incest, nor could she find it in marriage, as she was in two abusive relationships before reaching her mid 20s. It was only by starting her own businesses that Villarreal started the recovery process.

In fact, Villarreal started two of her businesses specifically to get over what happened to her. Her industrial maintenance business, Texas Property Control, was created out of her attempt to overcome her fear of men and large crowds, and helped to instill in her a sense of empowerment as a woman entrepreneur in a male-dominated field. More recently, she decided to turn her therapeutic hobby of candle making into a business, Revelations Candle & Christian Gift Shop, as a means to give back. After moving to Texas, Villarreal found out that nearby Houston is a major hub of human trafficking, and she wants to use her candle business to help other human trafficking victims in the area to start a new life after sex slavery.

Was your childhood in Angola, N.Y., pretty typical?

We were pretty sheltered. There was a lot of control. My father was a Navy man, so a lot of our discipline was military style. My sister and I had a very difficult childhood -- we had good times, but the discipline was hard. We weren't allowed to do a lot of things with other friends.

But when you were 15, you took a bus ride with a friend, without your parents' knowledge? What was your intention?

I would never normally have done this, but this girl I met at school, who I thought was my friend, talked me into skipping school. We took a bus from Angola to Buffalo, and we were supposed to spend a couple of hours at the restaurant where her boyfriend worked and then come back. I did not know at the time that this girl was supposed to pick me up -- that was her job. Well, we missed the bus coming back, so she called her boyfriend to pick us up. I was not street wise at all. I just knew I did not want go with him. He decided to go home first and change his clothes -- they told me to come in and I would be fine. I was going to wait in the car, but I was in an unfamiliar neighborhood and didn't want to stay by myself. As I was going up to the door, I wondered why there were bars on the upper windows, but thought, "Never mind, I'll be alright." I followed them upstairs to his apartment on the second floor, and when we got inside, he locked the door, and that was the turning point of my life.

Your instincts told you something was wrong, but you ignored your instincts?

Yes, I ignored them because I was afraid to call home. My grandmother lived in Buffalo but I didn't know her number. I felt like I had no choice, nowhere to go. I just needed to follow this girl and hope to get home, but I knew something was wrong.

After he locked the door, what happened next?

They started drinking, and I was in tears. I just wanted to go home and they kept giving me excuses and saying, "We'll go in a little bit." He said, "Why don't you lie down in the spare room? We'll wake you up later and take you home?" By then I was scared to death, because I didn't think I was getting home. I woke up the next morning and asked, "What happened, why aren't we going home?" And he looked at me and said "You're not going home. You're here to stay."

What was the first thing that went through your mind?

"I'm going to die." And I fought it -- I cried, screamed, tried to get out of the door, but I couldn't. By that night, I had fallen asleep again, and when I woke up, I was tied to the bed and that's the night I was raped. I kept thinking, I'm going to die, my parents are not going to know where I'm at, they're never going to find me, I'm never going to see my family again. And I screamed and he just kept forcing himself on me. After it was done, he told me to get up and take a shower and keep my mouth shut. I was in tears and I had blood all over. And he told me if I ever got out and if I ever said anything, he would go after my family, and he would kill me. I was there for three weeks. After one week, he started bringing people in and forcing me to have sex with them as well. I had no escape so I told myself I just need to give in or he's going to kill me, and some time there will be a chance that I will be able to get out but for now I just have to give in, and that's what I did. After the second week, he started bringing people in to look at me to buy me. I never knew what was going to happen -- whether I was going to get raped, bought or taken away then and there. I was drugged and got beaten every day, and I still fought as much as I could, but there wasn't anything I could do.

Going through that, did you ever want to give up on living?

I didn't know what to think -- I had nobody to turn to, nobody to talk to. It looked like this was going to be my life, and I was never going to get out of it and had to accept it, but I didn't want to accept it. I wanted to get out. I always had that in my mind. I was pretty strong willed. I didn't want to die. I still don't know how I made it through. I prayed all the time that God would find a way to come and help me, take me, save me, show me a way out.

And then when a woman from New York City bought you, that was actually what allowed you to escape?

[The abductor's] brother found out about it, and he had a key to the apartment, which was locked from the outside. He came up when the other girl and I were alone and said he didn't know this had been going on and told me I had just been sold and I was supposed to leave on a train that evening to New York City. He asked what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted to go home. So that man saved my life. He got a taxi and paid the taxi money to take me as far as it would take me. I was able to get to my grandmother's house.

And what happened to the girl?

He set us both free but a block down the road, she got out of the taxi and said she had to go back -- she couldn't leave.

What happened? Were your family members looking for you?

Yes, they were looking for me, but they had no idea where to look.

How did you find out that this man was caught years later, on your 26th birthday?

He was arrested on several counts of rape and sodomy. I was watching the news and talking to my mother on the phone, and the man's name and picture came on the TV.

So how did you go back to life as normal?

It's been a roller coaster ride until about five or six years ago. Now that I'm older, I can look back and say that girls have to be careful of new friends -- you don't know who they are. It's just like being married to a man. You never really know somebody. You have to be careful, strong. These relationships hurt me in one way, but made me strong in another way.

Where did candle art come into play?

A local candlemaker in Angola taught me, and I loved it. The candles came at a time in my life when I started opening up and feeling more confident. Anything creative, anything I could do with my hands was therapy.

I went through a lot of different things and forced myself into situations to get to this point where I could deal with my fears and overcome them, but it was my church that opened my mind to how I could reach out to other people and give back what God has given to me, and that's where the candles come in. I wanted to be able to sell these candles and give some of this money to Home of Hope in Houston, so I've slowly been getting involved in that. Eventually I'd like to set up an organization to house victims of sex trafficking, so they can start recuperating. Until I get to that point, I'm going to do whatever I can to help these girls. I have girls coming here to the shop talking about their experiences that they've never talked to anyone about before.

So at your shop, you want to not just sell candles but keep the door open for girls who want to talk, so they know they're not alone?

Exactly. And I have compassion, but I'm not going to feel sorry for them, because I have gone through every experience you can possibly think of. So if they come to me, I'm going to tell them to be strong, there is life after this, you can turn your life around. You can even own your own business. You are still a human, and it doesn't matter what people say about you or how they look at you, you need to be proud that you made it through. You lived.

Do you think you started your businesses as a way to regain control because of this experience where you felt so out of control and powerless?

Yes. I'm in control of myself. You get to the point where you're confident in yourself and you don't want to let anyone take that away, and that's the point I'm finally at.

Entrepreneur Spotlight

Name: Pamela Villarreal
Company: Revelations Candle & Christian Gift Shop, Texas Property Control
Age: 51
Location: Port Lacava, Texas
Founded: TPC: 2007. Revelations: 2010.
Employees: TPC: Seven. Revelations: None. 
2012 Projected Revenue: For both: More than $150,000
Website: www.wix.com/texaspropertycontrol/tpc, www.wix.com/texaspropertycontrol/native-lights