His mother supports the move his father wants to keep the boy with him in the brothel.Īs we are served glasses of scalding coffee, the boy tells us, through a translator, that he wants to grow up to be a police officer. The social workers have come here because they want to help the child enroll in a boarding school. He wears Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shoes. Then we meet their son. He is 5 years old, with big brown eyes and a shy smile. Our guides, social workers who requested for their protection that we not publish their names, lead us into a small apartment shared by a young mother and her husband. The blend of odors - from food, sweat, urine and rot - is overpowering. Garbage buckets and empty beer bottles sit outside the rooms. Adult and children's clothing hangs from the ceiling, drying in the heat of the day. A woman is sprawled, either asleep or unconscious, on the floor in one room. It is late afternoon, a few hours before the evening rush, and women and pimps are still resting in a row of small rooms along a narrow hallway. ►Read earlier installments in the EXPLOITED series here The wood, in the heat and humidity of the monsoon season, feels sticky beneath my shoes. The next stairstep in front of me is barely visible as IndyStar visuals editor Mykal McEldowney and I climb to the second floor.
As we step inside a brothel in the nearby Grant Road district, darkness envelopes us.
