Survivor Of Human Sex Trafficking In Queens Gets Award

QUEENS, NY – Shandra Woworuntu's American dream is worlds away from the nightmare she stepped into when she got off a plane from Indonesia 16 years ago. She arrived at John F. Kennedy airport hoping to work a six-month waitressing gig, make good money and return home to care for her three-year-old son. Instead, she was forced into a world of sex trafficking and violence that lasted months until her risky escape.

Since then, she's dedicated her life to shining a light on human trafficking in hopes that no other person will endure what she went through during and after her time as a sex slave. Woworuntu, who now lives in Queens, launched Mentari in 2014 to help other sex trafficking survivors get back on their feet through mentorship, education and career programs.

L'Oreal Paris recently named her among its 10 annual "Women of Worth" honorees. The title, awarded to women across the country for giving back to their communities, included a $10,000 donation to Mentari.

"It's just a dream," Woworuntu told Patch of the award. "My first American dream was to get money and go back to my country, but that was wiped out."

Woworuntu, once a financial analyst in Indonesia, said she lost her job in 1998 following the Asian financial crisis and began looking for work overseas amid political turmoil in her country. By 2001, she'd secured what she thought was a good job in America. For an initial $3,000 employment fee, Woworuntu said she was promised a six-month job as a waitress at $5,000 per month with food and living expenses covered.

"I wanted to go to America because I knew the value of a U.S. dollar," she said. "They gave me paperwork to go to the embassy, I got my visa and flew to NYC."

A man was waiting to pick her and several others up when she got there. They drove for hours, switching cars several times, before arriving at a house in Brooklyn. Woworuntu said by the time she realized it was a brothel, it was too late.

"I was sold to many different traffickers within a few hours of my arrival," she said.

Woworuntu said in the months that followed, she was trafficked to brothels, apartments and hotels up and down the East Coast. She doesn't know how long it lasted, only that she arrived to the country in June and by the time she ran away, the weather had grown cold. When she first ran to a police station and told an officer her story, he didn't believe her, she said.

"I was homeless and lived in the subway and on the buses," Woworuntu said. "I didn't have anything."

She said her luck only changed after a kind stranger listened to her story and offered to help, contacting both police and the FBI on her behalf. Woworuntu launched Mentari in hopes of offering other survivors more resources.

"I had so many difficulties to survive this situation," she said. "There is not enough help. I was homeless for three years."

Her organization helps reintegrate human trafficking survivors into the community and connects them with the job market. It has helped nearly 200 survivors find employment in the last three years, Woworuntu said.

It also raises awareness in countries like Indonesia of the risks of coming to the United States, and provides chicken and seeds for the country's poorest families to sell and eat to keep them from having to sell their children to traffickers, she said.

"I do this with my heart because I don’t want what happened with me to happen to someone else," she said.

Woworuntu is now in the running to be this year's National "Woman of Worth," which includes an additional $25,000 to the winner's cause. An online vote, open until Nov. 29, will decide the winner.

Lead image used with permission from Garrett Cornelison.