I met Melinda in a cafe in suburban Johannesburg.

It was my second morning at the cafe, near where my daughter lived. Melinda had learned through another waiter who had served me the previous day that I was a pastor. After taking my order and serving my coffee, she waited for a quiet moment in trade. 

My table was beside a roaring fire. Most winter mornings in Jo’burg start sub-zero. I was on the internet checking the footy scores back home when I sensed her standing next to me. In a nervous whisper she asked, ‘You are an Umfundisi (pastor)? Would you pray for me?

‘I am, and I will,’ I replied. ‘What is it that you want me to pray for especially?’

In short, sharp sentences, barely audible and casting a frightened glance in the boss’ direction, she rolled out her story, or at least the parts of it she felt some safety in telling a complete stranger, even if he was an Umfundisi.

Melinda, barely in her twenties, was an illegal from Zimbabwe. She had fled to South Africa for a variety of reasons; relational, economic, security. She went to a Methodist church back home and would I pray that she could get the opportunity to study in South Africa? Would I pray for her family back in Zimbabwe? Would I pray that she wouldn’t get caught and be deported? A few more snippets of information and she hurried off to take another patron’s order.

I returned to the same cafe the next day and the next. But I never saw Melinda again. Twelve months later, on my next visit to Johannesburg, the establishment was out of business and boarded up.

There are 50 million displaced people across the world. 30 million are internally displaced persons (IDP’s), living in their country of origin but far from home because of fear, civil war, persecution or natural disaster. They hide with relatives. Or they just hide. Or they drift.

20 million are living in another country. They may be just across the border from their homeland. They may be halfway around the world. Refugees. Asylum seekers. Illegal immigrants. Economic opportunists. Boat people. Truck people. Desperate people. Poor wanderers (Isaiah 58:7).

A much smaller number are kidnapped, sold, enslaved. 

The world is finally venting its collective moral outrage at the 220 plus school girls abducted at gunpoint by the Islamist extremist terrorist group known as Boko Haram. 

The power of social media? The attention of mainstream media now that a few celebrities are showing some moral muscle? Has anyone else wondered whether the media has been more engaged with the celebrities who have become engaged with the horror, than the horror itself?

200 plus catches our collective attention. But one or two is one or two too many, and women and girls are being kidnapped or coerced, and caught up in cycles of sexual abuse, exploitation and servitude in one’s and two’s every minute of every day.

It may be a sordid celebrity scandal on one side of the world. Or it may be an organised human trafficking syndicate on the other. It may be girls recruited and trafficked into sexual servitude to satisfy the lust of third world polygamists or first world predators and pedophiles.

The girls in Nigeria may never be recovered (please Lord, prove me wrong). Some predictions place them into separated single units, sold and scattered into several countries. A fourth wife for a middle age polygamist? A first wife to a once-child soldier? A ransom price in a bold bid for a prisoner exchange?

And abused girls in London and Sydney, San Francisco and Johannesburg may never recover from the violation of their dignity and basic human right to live in safety.

I preached at the wedding of a niece on Friday. Her cousins, two of whom are my two daughters, were also there. These three young women were mothers, in their thirties, radiant, happy, secure. As were their mothers; two sisters, one my wife. That can’t be said for many Australian women and girls.

Violence among women is a global problem and it is an Australian problem. One in three women in this country are victims of physical or sexual violence. One every week is killed at the hands of someone close.

The girls of Nigeria will be soon forgotten by the world’s media. But never by their mothers. And not by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What happened to Melinda? The question has often haunted me in the years since that morning when a frightened young illegal asked me to pray for her. Was she caught and deported? Was she sacked for asking patrons to pray for her? Was she exploited for more than cheap labour? Is she now in middle management, recruiting other desperate young women who have fled one abusive context only to be trapped in another?

Melinda was vulnerable. Working without the protection of labour laws. Exploited, frightened and only a breath away from sexual servitude.

Yes, bring back our girls. Our girls all over the world. In Nigeria and Australia. In London and Johannesburg. In Sydney. In your street and mine.

Bring them home. Make them safe.

Let’s all make a stand to stop violence to women.

Feature photo: Michael Fleshman