Helena native's charity restores hope for Nepal's poor, abused

The second time John Molineux traveled to Katmandu, he couldn't leave.

He had been looking for purpose, and he found it -- in the dark eyes of street boys, in the haunted faces of former prostitutes, and in the stories of terrified young girls sold into sexual slavery.

But he saw more than that -- he saw the joy in children who had left the streets for the warm confines of a healthy foster home. He saw the differences he could make, the injustices he could right. Amid the chaos of Nepal's capital, he heard God's call.

And so he stayed.

Now, about five years later, Molineux, a Helena native, heads Tiny Hands International -- a Christian organization devoted to helping the country's children and the poor.

Staffers walk the streets, using a children's book developed by the organization to try to persuade the runaways to come to a Tiny Hands home developed for former street children. Foster parents run eight other homes in the country for orphans and abandoned children.

The Princess House in Katmandu is another Tiny Hands operation where former prostitutes, who've been ostracized from their families and society, can begin life anew.

Other Tiny Hands workers are stationed at border crossings, looking for men taking teenage girls -- and some who are as young as 7 or 11 -- across the Indian border. Lured with promises of marriage or jobs, the village girls are unknowingly headed for the brothels of Calcutta and elsewhere. If they're not intercepted, the girls will be sold as slaves and then brutally beaten and gang-raped before being forced to sleep with 25 or 40 men each day.

The organization is expanding into India and Bangladesh -- where sex trafficking is believed to be worse -- and is studying new programs, such as microlending, in which donors give small amounts to entrepreneurs in developing countries and are eventually repaid.

The group has published a parenting book in Nepalese and is working on a "poor man's guide," which will contain information about job opportunities, skills training, education and health.

The organization's name is both a reference to children it serves and the humble knowledge that its successes are incremental.

"We're trying to do God's work," Molineux said. "Our hands that do the work are small, and we're just trying to do what we can.

"The reason I'm doing this work is because I'm a Christian," he added. "(God) tells use to feed the hungry and clothe the poor and unleash the oppressed."

Beginnings

After Molineux graduated from Capital High School, where he was a member of the 1997 state championship football team, he attended and played football for Taylor University, a nondenominational Christian college in Indiana.

After graduating, he visited Nepal for the first time, looking for adventure and a way to get involved. He worked with street children in Katmandu for three months before returning stateside.

Later, after the end of a relationship, Molineux cast about searching for his next step. He got in touch with a friend who'd traveled with him to Nepal. The friend had stayed and opened a home for children, and invited Molineux to come work.

When he arrived, he noted the difference between the children in the home -- they were happy, healthy, developing young human beings -- and the street kids, who run away to get away from family or school and eke out a living by theft or begging. Many huff glue to stave off the cold and the reality of their desperate situations, and eventually they get hooked on heroin. HIV is rampant, and most of the kids are dead before their 20th birthday.

"It was the contrast between the best thing and the worst thing -- happy kids and street kids -- and that's when I knew what I wanted to do with my life," Molineux said.

He asked friends for donations and eventually secured enough to start his own home for children. The donors became the group's board of directors -- and everyone learned to make the funding stretch.

"We really learned the value of frugality," he said. "We want to find those situations where a little bit of money can do a lot."

Last year, Tiny Hands staffers rescued more than 70 girls from sex traffickers at the India-Nepal border, spending less than $100 for each rescue.

Eventually, a businessman from Lincoln, Neb., learned what the organization was doing. He quit his job and began fundraising full-time stateside, so Tiny Hands now has much more support than it did in the beginning. But Molineux said the organization has stayed true to its frugal roots and the problems they're trying to address are great.

Off the streets

The kids Tiny Hands works with every day grew up in a different world. Poverty is rampant. Violence and protests are common. A long civil war recently ended. For 16 hours each day, there's no electricity.

"When they come in they have boils and rashes and lice," Molineux said. "They often come from a place where they haven't experienced real love ... they're withdrawn into themselves."

As the children become more comfortable with their new foster parents and siblings, they begin to relax. They start playing with the other kids, and they begin to trust the adults.

"Suddenly, you'll see this little smile," he said. "And then they're just like another kid."

In its early years, Tiny Hands often took the street kids back to their families. But workers often saw the children reappear. The organization recently started a home specifically for street kids, and workers now try to persuade the children to go there.

The children in the organization's other homes were abandoned or orphaned, and Molineux said their presence in foster care means they're less likely to end up on the streets in the first place. The group spends much time finding and vetting foster parents, and they've recently hired on a woman with expertise in child development.

The parents and staffers work to teach the children how to read and write, and when they're ready, the kids are placed in school.

Out of the brothels

Princess House typically serves as a residence for women who freely worked in Katmandu's sex trade, but Molineux has seen some who ran from the brothels in India.

He told of one young girl who managed to get onto the roof of her prison and saw a police officer standing below. She threw a bucket of water on him, prompting him to come to the top. The officer heard her story and took the girl and a friend out of the brothel.

When asked about the details of sex trafficking, Molineux only knows what he's read. But what he's learned is horrifying -- some estimates put the number of girls taken from Nepal to India each year at 10,000. Perhaps twice as many are being taken from Bangladesh.

"No one really knows, but it's huge and it's vast and it's powerful, and it just destroys the lives of these girls," he said. "It's the greatest injustice in the world that I know of. My heart is broken by it."

Men dressed in Western-style clothing will visit remote villages and lure the girls away. If they make it to the brothels, the girls don't learn their fate until after they're sold. There is little chance for escape.

Border police are notoriously corrupt or corruptible, Molineux said. But his organization has gained authorization from the government to monitor some border sites. If workers see a suspicious situation, the police are required to work with them and question the suspected traffickers and victims.

"When you're there, they can't take bribes, they can't just wave them through," Molineux said.

Tiny Hands is working to get similar permission in Bangladesh.

"We're in a place where it's just desperately needed," he said. "We're really making a push to expand this work."

A calling

Halfway around the world, Molineux sees a place much different than his hometown. Visitors are generally shocked the first time they see Katmandu.

"It's very chaotic and crazy and hard to believe -- an absolute contrast to what life is like in Helena, Montana," he said.

"Everything is just hard, hard to do. But it's also an adventure. The city has its own type of charm ... and the people are often very interesting and very kind and friendly.

"I love (the work), but not necessarily because it's easy or enjoyable or comfortable, but it's meaningful. This is my life. This is my calling and my passion.

"We'll expand to new countries and expand what we're doing," he added.

To learn more, donate, sponsor a child or volunteer, visit tinyhandsinternational.org.

Reporter Larry Kline: larry.kline@helenair.com or 447-4075