As I ventured out into the street to enter their lives, I discovered a whole new world. Children were used as prostitutes and beggars. They were instructed to steal and deliver drugs. How had I been so blind to their plight? The little girl whose face shone with happiness when I handed her a bag of candy years earlier came flooding back to my memory, and I knew what I had to do.

My mother had been running a Christian library and counseling center for illiterate mothers and children for several years. Together we began to reach out to the women on the street.

Children, dirty and hungry, began arriving on our doorstep. Many of the children who came to our center had been abused by alcoholic and drug-addicted parents. We fed them rice and curry, gave them baths and taught them reading, writing and arithmetic before sending them away for the night.

“Amma! Amma!” a tiny 8-year-old girl cried one morning as she stumbled through the door of our library. Tears ran down her face, but she refused to tell my mother or me why she cried.

Inquiring from the other children the reason for this young one’s distress, we learned the answer. The girl had been raped the night before.

Neither my mother nor I could sleep that night. The cries of the little girl echoed in my mind. Although the children were safe at the center during the day, many of them returned to an unsafe, abusive environment in the evenings.

One child, beaten daily by an alcoholic father, used to hide in the marshes around the slums. The mother of another malnourished boy had poisoned herself after being repeatedly abused by her alcoholic husband.

In the war-torn, Buddhist nation of Sri Lanka, tens of thousands of children are sold to pedophiles or used in the child pornography business. Young girls, in particular, are in danger of being abused and raped by male family members. The foster mother of one of the girls stated that she could not protect the child from her husband and sons.