Human Trafficking Survivor Shares Her Story To Assist Hospital Staff
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Human trafficking survivor Shandra Woworuntu spoke at Huntington Hospital to educate hospital staffers on means to identify and treat victims of human trafficking.
Long Islander News photo/Connor Beach
By Connor Beach
cbeach@longislandergroup.com
In 2001, a then 24-year-old Shandra Woworuntu escaped from a brothel in Brooklyn where she and other Asian-descent victims of human trafficking were held as sex slaves.
She was frightened, alone and in need of help.
Woworuntu approached three police officers, and employees at the consulate of her native Indonesia, but she said they refused to believe her horrific story.
Eventually a tourist visiting from Ohio, Eddy, noticed Woworuntu begging in Grand Ferry Park in Brooklyn, brought her to a police station and helped bring the nightmare experience to an end. But not before another hurdle.
Woworuntu says a nurse at the hospital she was brought to “just pushed my legs open without saying anything” during a genital check. “Even if I just came from a place that is so dirty, I’m still a human.”
On Friday, Woworuntu set out to ensure other victims of human trafficking don’t have a similar experience when brought to a hospital. She joined Dr. Santhosh Paulus, a hospitalist at Huntington Hospital, for a seminar designed to teach hospital staffers how to recognize and care for victims of such crimes.
“I really appreciate Shandra being on our panel; her amazing story of survival offers a perspective that is very powerful for the professionals here,” Paulus said.
Paulus added that the training session is part of a three-step program currently designed to educate staff in both Huntington’s Hospital’s emergency room and the Dolan Health Center in Greenlawn to identify warning signs, such as: someone handling a victim’s personal documents; suspicious tattoos; and/or lack of eye contact.
“Treatment from the emergency room staff is vital; we try to teach all the staff to treat patients with empathy and care,” Woworuntu said. “I’m glad that this hospital will stand up and start helping the trafficking victims.”
Woworuntu, founder of nonprofit program Mentari, which supports human trafficking survivors, previously worked as a financial analyst in Indonesia, but lost her job in the financial crisis and political turmoil that plagued Indonesia in the late ’90s.
Promised $5,000 a month to work in a Chicago hotel, Woworuntu says she was greeted at John F. Kennedy International Airport by an Asian man named Johnny Wong, who knew her name and had her picture.
She said Wong took all of her personal belongings and identification. “I trusted him because he had all of my information.”
Woworuntu and two other girls ages 16 and 18 drove with Wong to Flushing, where they were transferred to another vehicle.
When the new driver handed Wong money, Woworuntu thought to herself, “This is not right.”
After four money transfers between traffickers, Woworuntu and the other girls ended up in the attic of a house in Bayside.
“The fourth man told us to undress because he wanted to see our skin,” she said.
Woworuntu said she refused. And then she realized the situation she was in.
“This man took the gun from his pocket and put it too my head,” she said. “A few hours after my arrival I was sold to the sex buyers.”
For the next several months Woworuntu said she was constantly moved around the tri-state area to different brothels where she was used as a sex slave. She finally escaped by jumping out of the second floor bathroom window of the Brooklyn brothel, she said.
Woworuntu, who has lived in New York City ever since she served as a key witness in an FBI-led case against her traffickers, said empowerment is the best way for survivors of trafficking to cope with their extreme trauma.
“We have to change our community so we can help the many hidden victims.”
