I’ll be honest – I don’t often watch videos on the subject of human trafficking, as they’re more than a bit intense. My imagination responds actively enough to written accounts, thank you very much. However, every once in awhile at least, it’s important to open one’s eyes and really see. From Sept. 17 to Sept. 30, Explore.org is running a Human Rights Series that includes a video from the Rescue Foundation on sex trafficking in Mumbai, addressing the approximately 25,000 girls there who are forced into prostitution.

Hailing from India, as well as Nepal and Bangladesh, the girls are kidnapped by strangers while going about their daily business and trafficked into a brothel. Or, subject to extreme poverty, they are sold or otherwise abandoned by their families. The outlawed practice of Devadasi, too, often leaves women and girls with no other options than brothel life. Have a look at their stories, with more after the jump.

Subject to both physical and mental tortures in darkened rooms, starved, beaten and drugged to ensure their compliance, the girls are made to feel completely hopeless and trapped by their brothel owners – sometimes quite literally. One girl noted that whenever police strode by the building, “They would put me in a crate to hide me.” And Rescue Foundation workers note that this practice of hiding away is not uncommon, as during raids, they often do not see the girls right away.

Nor is it always easy to convince them to escape. The Rescue Foundation must lay a lot of groundwork prior to raids, posing as clients and establishing trust with each girl, counseling her prior to rescue. Because although this life is nothing short of horrific, clothing, makeup, shelter and food (however scant), is provided. And the promise of money, even if it never actually ends up in the girls’ own hands, is used by brothel owners to string them along.

Once the Rescue Foundation does succeed in assisting a girl – and they never turn anyone away – they have their work cut out for them. Complete counseling and medical services are necessary, as well as pure love, support and a sense of safety and home. Skills training and legal assistance are also given, free of charge, so the girls can eventually rebuild their lives and make it on their own. However, the sense of empowerment and closure from taking their traffickers to court is hard-won; cases can take three to five years to be heard, and testimonies can be emotionally difficult, if not impossible, to give.

With a continual influx of cases, Rescue Foundation’s work is clearly critical – and worth it, in the end, to see these girls, once “worried and scared,” wearing “furtive look(s),” transform from victims of sex trafficking into the strong, smiling and hopeful.