West Coast ministry seeks to squelch India’s child sex trade

SEATTLE — Bob Goff may be a born-again believer, but he has no qualms about frequenting the red-light districts of Southern India.

It’s a Christ-like passion that drives the successful San Diego lawyer to rub elbows with brothel owners and other seedy characters that scavenge on the souls of innocent young girls thrust into human trafficking and prostitution.

“We want to raise the stakes,” said Goff, who maintains a law practice in San Diego and Seattle. “We want them to know that if they traffic in children, the law is not far behind.”

Tapping the resources of American and Indian lawyers, Goff’s Seattle-based Restore International ministry is boldly challenging the illegal sex trade by convincing local officials in India to enforce its own laws.

“Enforcement is the issue,” he said.

On American soil, there is also support for anti-human trafficking isssues. On Jan. 10, President George W. Bush signed into law a renewal of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which the president said “enhances our ability to combat trafficking in persons by extending and improving prosecutorial and diplomatic tools, and also adds new protections for victims.”

For his part, Goff’s ministry tracks young girls who are either sold into prostitution by their families or who seek the work as a means to survive. Once the girls are traced and evidence is collected, they contact local law enforcement officials, who raid the premises.

“We want to attack the problem from several different angles,” Goff, the ministry’s founder and president, said, adding that a big portion of what they do is to educate police and judges about the sweeping impact of human trafficking.

“It’s not unheard of for the police to be complacent in the red-light areas,” he said. “There is a huge opportunity for lawyers to make a momentous difference in the life of kids that are released (from prostitution).”

At least one of their cases is pending before India’s highest court, said Goff, who teaches a business law course each spring at Point Loma Nazarene University, where his 16-year daughter also takes classes.

Although clearly a faith-based organization, Restore International is registered as an official human rights group, called a Non-Government Organization, allowing it access in India.

“We’re not bashful saying where our hope is,” Goff said. “We’re doing this first and foremost because we are Christians. At the same time, we don’t want it to be an impediment to get it done.”

Goff said he founded Restore as a way to focus on the often-neglected rural areas of India. Existing ministries, he said, focused on urban rescues.

Industry boon
Poverty and culture, including two practices, the dowry and a custom called devadasis, in which a young girl is dedicated as a temple prostitute, fuel India’s child trafficking and prostitution trade. Two years ago, president George W. Bush committed $50 million to help combat worldwide human trafficking, and although the practice is often associated with Africa, Goff said an exploding sex industry has propelled India past Africa in several categories, including the number of citizens testing HIV-positive.

Despite their dedicated and often dangerous raids, Goff admits that many times they often rescue a child only to have her remanded back to her parents who turn around and sell her back into the adult trade.

Such was the case in late October when Goff and his team were tracking a young girl who had been rescued during a raid earlier in the year. Goff and Co. returned to the tribal village where the girl was supposed to be living, only to find she had just been resold to another brothel for $40. An angry villager greeted the Americans with a knife.

Arriving too late to stop them, the Restore team left the village to gather proof that some of the 13 arrested brothel owners were already back in business. After getting wind of their plan, the brothel owners decided to fight back, this time turning their rage on a Restore operative whose identity had been uncovered.

Goff and Greg Malstead, the ministry’s operations director, raced to the operative, pulling him into the safety of the SUV as the angry crowd swelled to several hundred.

“The first rock bounced off of the windshield,” Goff wrote in a letter to supporters. “The second rock broke through the side window. Most of the rest of the windows soon collapsed in a sea of shattered glass as the brothel owners and their supporters continued their assault on our SUV.”

After 30 minutes, police arrived and the crowds dispersed.

“We were safe,” Goff wrote. “We had scrapes and bruises from broken glass and the occasional rock that landed on target.”

Resolute in spirit
Despite the ongoing threat, Goff said he and his team, including his employees, have an enormous peace about their work, all dedicated to the India cause.

“You do encounter that resistance from time to time,” he said. “You match that resistance with resolve.

“We do whatever it takes. It’s not just wishful thinking. We will get the girl.”

His confidence, Goff cautioned, should not be misconstrued as flippant.

“We are not cavalier about what we are doing, but we sense God’s tremendous protection,” he said.

“You get this overwhelming sense that when you do something and you know there is absolutely nothing in it for you; I was in a place were I was devoid of everything—yet everything was in it for me.

“Still, you have the tremendous sense of being in the right place. Yes, this is the exact place we are supposed to be. The status quo is not acceptable.”

Wide network
In addition to street-level raids, Goff said his organization stays in close contact with U.S. officials, including members of Congress. This fall, Goff said, the USAID, the federal government’s foreign assistance arm, withdrew its financial support of an Indian non-governmental agency after Restore reported the organization supported child prostitution.

“They were saying they were an HIV prevention group,” he said. “They were a group of brothel owners.”

In the long-term, Goff said his ministry is in the process of securing land in Southern India to use to build a rehabilitation center to help wean young girls from the lure and trap of prostitution.

“We pursue some of the same things Jesus did,” he said. “Speaking up for those who don’t have a voice, rescuing, all the things He’s done for us.”

Published, February 2006

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