The Butterfly Project: How We Began and Some Thoughts About 'Trust' and 'Disclosure'.......

A number of Chab Dai aftercare organizations in Cambodia expressed their desire to understand more about the long-term impacts of their programs on victims/survivors of sexual exploitation and trafficking. At this time, no one organization had the capacity to conduct long-term follow up on their clients leaving their programs. Hence, the idea of a cooperative effort began to grow. The Butterfly Project is the first longitudinal re-integration research study that seeks to follow a group of sexually exploited/trafficked youth and adults over a ten year period. We started in 2010 and we are now in year five of our journey.

The core objectives of the Butterfly research are two-fold.  The first objective is to hear the ‘voice’ of victims/survivors who have (re-) integrated out of aftercare and community programs, and through their ‘voice’ they can inform the practitioner community in Cambodia. The second objective is to disseminate our findings and lessons learned amongst mixed audiences of other practitioners, policy makers and academics within the wider region and global community.

The Butterfly project is like any other study in that participation is voluntary. A participant has the right to drop out at any time. Yet, when the point of the study is to follow a group of the same people over a period of time, then attrition or dropping out is an issue. We anticipated this challenge from the beginning and, at five years, we are still in contact with the majority of our 128 participants. Aside from working hard to maintain the database on our participants’ most current whereabouts, we believe the primary reason they voluntarily remain in our study is because they trust us (the research team).

Essentially, every participant in our study has experienced some degree of sexual trauma, and a number of studies suggest that severe trauma exposure results in and is associated with negative impacts on memory. We sense this may be true for some of our participants, as year to year their answers vary and even contradict what they have said previously. We also find participants’ varying emotional states, their family dynamics, their relationships and their financial securities are all matters which affect how they respond at any given interview. Many of our older participants are in violent and abusive relationships whilst younger participants often describe difficulties with their peers. Others work in dangerous work contexts, and most are struggling to meet their economic needs.

Most of our participants live with feeling stigmatized for their past experiences of sexual exploitation and so most live with many secrets. We have found that as each year progresses, increasing numbers of participants are telling us they trust us enough to disclose more of their stories. They express how therapeutic it feels to share their feelings and experiences with our team.

Many have also told us they continue in the study because they feel valued as individuals and not just subjects in a research project. They state that they feel respected, appreciated and honored because we ask them about their lives and their opinions. In addition, a number of them have stated that they appreciate the opportunity to express their ‘voice’ because they hope their insights and experiences will help others in similar circumstance.

Our team feels each participant is unique. We are thankful they trust us enough and are willing to express their ‘voice.’  It is such a privilege to journey along with them, and we hope through their stories they feel empowered and that their voice will empower future generations.

If you would like any of our annual reports and themed papers please visit the Chab Dai website

www.chabdai.org

Siobhan Miles, Butterfly manager

The Duality of Being Oppressed & The Oppressor

The more we understand our sector and the issues at hand with human trafficking, the more we need to question our own power in this fight for abolition. 

Pablo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was and still is revolutionary for the emancipation of the oppressed and states that we are very much a part of injustice and the processes that circumvent it. In one form or another, we are the oppressor and the oppressed. Therefore, we must question our own power and what values we are assigning to this power. Jo Sprague (1994), a leader in critical pedagogy, states that if we just look at a small group of knowers we fail to act as a community that embraces open dialogue and multiple viewpoints. Experience in a field does not make one more qualified than others when offering critical insight and expertise. We must constantly be questioning our knowledge, our reality and our values. More importantly, we must be self-reflective and critical of what we are voicing. What are we assigning value to? What are we not talking about? What biases and privileges are causing hindrance to our cause? This realization and self-reflection allows one to question the nature of one’s power, which only enhances the quality, integrity and value of the research and practices at hand.

By learning to problematize our own power, we remember "words belong to those who speak them as well as those who hear them" (Sprague, 1994). The power of our language can act as a tool to teach and advocate for others, but it can also manipulate and often assumes individualism. This power, more often than not, reflects our cultural identity, the structure we reside in and what we stand for.

We must seek to understand how our communication about trafficking is legitimizing as well as ignoring the problems at hand.

Over the years we have seen glimpses of this critique and evaluation occur. We are realizing the existences of imperialism in NGOs, cross-cultural hindrances in policy-making, and the now urgent need for a trauma-informed lens. Neo-imperialism exists and operates under the pretext of rescuing people and spreading democracy, justice, human rights and hegemonic thinking.We often prescribe to the oppressed what we think is most suitable for them. Freire states, "Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual's choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber's consciousness." The oppressed, having embodied the guidelines of the oppressor, tend to fear freedom because they have adapted to their structure of domination. He goes on to state, “leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people – they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.”

Therefore, we must sit back, understand, and allow others to tell us about their world so we can understand their world. We must look at the thought-language of people in which they perceive their realities. “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” (Freire, 1993, p. 72) Thus, knowledge will emerge and be established when interaction and dialogue occurs. It becomes a socially constructed process (Sprague, 1994).

We need to be able to make connections between our own experiences, others’ experiences and the social constructions of reality. In return, sharing these conceptualizations with each other can make new meanings and new possibilities for our realities. This way "he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.” (Freire, 1993, p. 94). 

We must re-examine ourselves constantly in order to authentically commit ourselves to the people. And ask ourselves, are we truly fighting by their side?

Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing

      Group Inc.

Sprague, J. (1994). Ontology, politics and instructional communication research: Why we can’t

just agree to disagree about power. Communication Education. 43, 1-25