But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
I’m reading a fascinating book, Paper Daughters of Chinatown. It’s a true story, with some fictional details added for interest about the slave and prostitution trade of young Chinese women, and it takes place around 1900. At that time, there was a ban on any Chinese coming to the US, except if they were coming to meet family. And so a huge business started where girls were listed on paper as the daughters of US resident slave traders. In China, they were either sold by their impoverished parents, or worse, they were promised a US husband, if only they came. And come they did.
To show what it was like, the book chronicles one young woman who was promised a US husband, and so she left her mother in Canton. When she arrived, she was put on the selling block, and sold to the highest bidder. Eventually she ended up in a home with a very cruel woman slave owner, and they fed the girl doses of opium to get her addicted, make her more dependent on the owners, and more compliant. She was asked to ‘entertain’ various men. Not surprisingly, a large part of the industry was controlled by the Tong, or Chinese mafia at the time.
Eventually, the real-life director of a real-life rescue mission house goes on a rescue mission to retrieve her. Accompanied by a few sympathetic police officers, they find her, and carry her abused and drug infused body out of the house and to safety.
If you’re likely to read the book and don’t like spoilers, stop reading. Otherwise, here goes.
The director gets a call to save another girl from the house, and they’re a little worried it’s a trap. But they go. They find the cruel slave owner alone in the house which is now empty. It turns out, she was once a traded sex slave, and her previous owners wanted her back, or for her to pay off some huge debt. She also owed the opium dealers. As a result, she sold everything in the house and called the rescue mission to save her, to protect her. The director wasn’t sure whether this was just a ploy to get to the abused women who’d been rescued from her, so they ended up putting the slave owner effectively into a locked separate building, but they did take care of her. Eventually, it became clear she really was no different than their other rescued girls; she’d been abused, addicted, and was used as a sex slave for years. Instead of it breaking her, it made her hardened.
After a year of separate care, the woman wanted to apologize to the girl who’d she’d abused. The girl was asked, and initially she refused to meet the woman. How could they even ask, when this woman had been so cruel? But eventually the girl agreed to see her. There was a genuine apology, and forgiveness, and heart-felt tears from everyone. The girl realized that in forgiving her abuser she was unburdened by the rage that held her captive.
Thankfully, I have never had to contemplate forgiveness of someone who hurt me that badly, so I was grateful to read this story, just last night. I’ve often seen people who were shown mercy and forgiveness, but then found it very difficult to forgive those who’d hurt them. After reading this story, I had a visceral reaction of not wanting to forgive the slave owner, despite knowing that was what should be done.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that forgiveness is about condoning or forgetting about past harms done. Rather, it’s more about letting the beast of anger and hurt go, to not allow past actions control today’s outlook or tomorrow’s promise. This morning, I’m thinking about how very hard it is to love the abuser, but how liberating it is for the abused. I’m also thinking about how I might champion for modern-day sex-slaves.
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