The Current

One of the most touching client stories I’ve heard since joining IJM involves a six-year-old girl who had been sexual assaulted in Manila.  It was my colleague Sean Litton’s first week on the job in a brand new IJM office in the Philippines when a social service provider brought the child and a case file folder to him and told Sean that the judge was hearing the case that very day.  Sean had little time to do more than scan the folder and speak briefly with the child, who would have to provide testimony in the case.  When he talked to the victim, his heart sank.  The child had a developmental disability and had difficulty concentrating. He entered the courtroom with the child and her social worker with little hope that she would be able to provide compelling testimony about the violence she had suffered.

When it came time for the girl to testify, the judge spoke kindly to her, asking her to describe what had happened. Sean had asked an IJM social worker to stand between the child and the accused so that the little girl wouldn’t see him in the courtroom. The girl straightened up and confidently and clearly told her story.  Sean was astounded.  When the judge asked the child if she knew who had hurt her, the little girl craned her head around Sean and said loudly and clearly:  “That’s him.  Right there.”  The perpetrator was convicted and sentenced to a significant jail sentence. 

IJM is one of the very few human rights organizations that helps judicial authorities to achieve perpetrator accountability in local courts.  It is very difficult to move legal cases through public justice systems that are choked, broken, under-trained, and often corrupt.  But that is simply the reality in which the poor live in many countries.  It is the only justice system they have, and it is IJM’s mission to make those broken institutions work and work well for children who have been sexually assaulted, trafficked women and kids, and bonded labor slaves. 

Perpetrator accountability is the overlooked piece of the human rights agenda, except in extreme circumstances like genocide and crimes against humanity, when international institutions have to step into the breach.  For little kids like Sean’s client, there is only her own country’s justice system.  Making it work right in her case means that the grown man who assaulted her won’t do it to other little girls.

Read more about why IJM takes criminals to court, or watch this message from Sean about the importance of perpetrator accountability.

Holly Burkhalter is the Vice President of Government Relations at International Justice Mission. IJM's Justice Campaigns mobilizes people around the country in support of U.S. policies that will lead to the abolition of human trafficking and modern-day slavery.