The road to stolen childhoods

How an English Christian uncovered a Brazilian tragedy and decided to act

“Over the next few hours we would meet over a dozen young girls, each trapped in a life of abuse and exploitation, and all within the space of less than a square mile. What was most difficult to accept, though, was their ages – the youngest was ten, and most were younger than thirteen. We would later hear from the town’s children’s council that there were at least 200 girls involved in prostitution in the town, and the average age was just eleven.” (Highway to Hell, by Matt Roper)

Ana Flavia was a beautiful, sweet Brazilian girl. Sadly she fell in with the wrong company when she was just nine or ten, older girls who were experienced in selling their sexual services to truck drivers on Brazil’s BR-116, a vast, 2,800- mile-long highway. Ana and the older girls would hitch rides on trucks together and Ana was encouraged to also engage in prostitution. On 24 May 2011 Ana Flavia’s young, messed up life was fnally extinguished. Speeding along the hard shoulder, distracted by the two girls in his cabin, the driver didn’t see a brokendown lorry in the darkness. The impact crushed the passenger side of the cabin, where Ana was sitting. She died before rescue crews could cut her free.

Daiane was from a small village near the BR-116. She’d started selling her body on the highway when she was only eleven, “just to get out of the house”. She had been roaming the motorways ever since. Eventually Daiane also became a drug addict. One night she was killed in a hail of bullets, murdered on the orders of a local crack dealer who she owed money to. She was just 18 when her short and painful life ended.

Leidiane was a child who was regularly selling her body on the BR-116 and also developed an addiction to crack. Matt writes that they don’t know if she turned to drugs to numb the pain of her nightly ordeal on the motorway, or if she had started selling her body to feed her habit, but the former seemed much more probable. Matt Roper continues: “… she had fallen headlong into the abyss, and, with no one to catch her, had hit rock bottom. She seemed tragically beyond saving. And all at the age of just twelve.”

14-year-old Natiele was described by her mother as a “good Christian girl”. She sold bunches of chives on the streets of Padre Paraiso to help provide some money for her poor mother. But one night she did not come home. Apparently a notorious female pimp named Gau, had waylaid or forced Natiele into prostitution, taking her to a place called the Cow’s Head, along the BR-116. Months later Natiele was found dead, nearly a thousand miles away from her home. Her life had ended inside a trucker’s cabin, where she had been brutally beaten and shot. Neither the truck driver who murdered Natiele nor the woman who allegedly pushed her into prostitution have ever been brought to justice.

In practice the justice system in Brazil does not give much priority to protecting children from sexual exploitation.

Tragic stories …

These are just a few of the tragic stories recorded by Matt Roper, an English evangelical Christian, in his groundbreaking book, Highway to Hell. The book is a very moving record of the long journey by Matt and his travelling companion, Canadian country singer Dean Brody, along the BR-116, where they discover entire communities living from child sexual exploitation and where parents sell their own daughters while those in authority turn a blind eye.

As committed and compassionate Christians their shock leads to practical action, to bring light into the darkness, to provide hope, healing and justice to traumatized young lives. I frst met Matt Roper many years ago, when I spoke at his University’s Christian Union meeting regarding the plight of Street Children in Latin America. Matt later went to Brazil to help street children, and also set up a charity to assist them. He knows God’s heart for the street children and child prostitutes and has devoted much of his adult life to rescuing them from their plight.

In Highway to Hell Matt describes his inner confict when he realises the heavy price that he must pay to make a positive diference for the countless poor young girls caught up in prostitution along the BR-116. He writes: “I had a good job, a young family, a mortgage. My days of being radical, of acting on impulse, were over. Yet everything inside me was telling me I should do something reckless for these poor young girls – whatever it might take to bring this tragedy to light, and to bring them hope. Tears welled up in my eyes as God’s love for the lost girls of this obscure Brazilian motorway began to overwhelm me.” 

“Forget what the world considers precious,” he seemed to say. “Nothing is more precious to me than these little ones.” (My emphasis added.)

This is so true. Sadly, so many Christians underestimate how strongly God feels about the protection and nurturing of children. Jesus went so far as to say that whoever welcomes a child in His name welcomes Him. (Matthew 18:5) Here Matt is willing to look at the tragedy as God sees it, and accordingly to put aside his own personal interests.

Matt also highlights God’s concern for justice: “As Christians we believed in a God whose very nature is justice, who comforts the broken and defends the rights of the poor; it was this conviction which had brought us here.” He lives out God’s heart for the sexually abused and exploited children, with Matt and his wife even adopting a child prostitute in order to rescue her from the sex trade.

Rescued through dance

In the late 1990s Matt had frst started reaching out to street girls by using dance as a form of outreach, therapy, a means to raise the girls’ self-esteem, to show them God’s love and give them the strength to change. He had done this under a charity he set up called Meninadanca, in the city ofBelo Horizonte. Translated from Portuguese to English Meninadanca literally means ‘Girldance’. As part of his vision to set up many Meninadanca centres along the BR-116 to help girls at risk, Matt writes: “It would be a place where they would know they were safe, where there were people they could talk to, who cared for them, who would do everything they could to lead them back from the abyss. It would be a place where God’s love would shine, where girls who had only known hurt and loneliness would fnd hope, healing, and justice.”

Matt describes the opening of the frst Meninadanca centre or Pink House (The Centres are painted a very bright pink, which the girls love.) along the BR-116, at the town of Medina, a hotspot for child prostitution. By the time the Pink House was ready to open, the Meninadanca team in Medina had got to know fortyeight girls, aged between eleven and sixteen, many trapped in a nightmare of abuse and exploitation. The team visited each of the girls in their homes, delivering a personalized pink invitation to be part of the Pink House, but making clear it was they who needed to take the important frst step towards change – by coming themselves the following week to register. Amazingly just two days into registration week every single one of the invited girls came to register.

Within the Pink House is a dance studio and beauty salon. The walls of the house are adorned with words and phrases designed to build up the girls’ self-worth including the verse from Jeremiah 29:11. This is just the beginning, many more places along the BR-116 need Pink Houses set up to help at risk girls. But Matt realises that there also needs to be a challenging of entrenched attitudes that accept child prostitution as normal or simply ignore this evil.

He describes his Brazilian colleague’s summary of this problem: “Child prostitution’s just part of life here,” Rita told us. “People who have grown up here don’t see it like you and I do, even the Christians. Most people have stopped seeing it at all.”

So in addition to setting up Meninadanca centres along the BR-116 Matt and his colleagues come up with a strategy to challenge people to rethink how they view child prostitution, which they call the “Changing Minds” programme. They realise that by changing attitudes they might break the cycle of prostitution, saving not just one girl but generations of girls.

Find out more …

Although published 6 years ago, the issues covered by Highway to Hell are still extremely relevant and important. The book is shocking, deeply moving and ultimately very inspiring, a clear example of how Christians can be Salt and Light (Matthew 5:13 to 16) in some of the darkest places, but only if they are willing to do God’s bidding and step out of their comfort zones. In my view this book is a Christian Classic and a wake-up call to Christians to share God’s tender heart for sexually exploited children.

You can buy Matt Roper’s book, Highway to Hell, on Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk /HighwayHell-Where-Childhoods-Stolen/dp/ 0857212540

Will you assist Matt Roper in his “David and Goliath” battle to end child prostitution and to bring God’s light and love to Brazil’s darkest places? You can support his work by making a cheque or charity voucher out to: Meninadanca and posting it to: Meninadanca, P.O. Box 11116, Stansted CM24 8WL. Their website address is: meninadanca.org , Email address: ofce@meninadanca.org and their Facebook page link: facebook.com/meninadanca