Starving Syrian Refugee Parents Forced to Sell Daughters As Sex Slaves, Missionary Reveals

For lack of money to buy food to feed their families, some desperate Syrian refugee parents have been forced to do the unthinkable—sell their daughters to sex traders.

A ministry director working in Turkey recently revealed this alarming development to Christian Aid Mission.

The director said he came to know about this when one grandmother, named Amena, arrived at one of makeshift refugee camps in Turkey with her daughter-in-law and three grandchildren.

After months of receiving aid from the ministry, the elderly woman confided to the director that some starving refugees have resorted to selling their daughters to nightclub owners just to have some money to buy food.

"These girls, or newly wedded 'brides,' are then used as slaves. Their families don't see them again," the ministry director said.

He said the refugees are so ashamed of what's going on that they don't want to talk about it.

A nightclub owner typically pays $100 to parents after their daughter completed one month of work for his business.

The nightclub owner, together with the girls he hired as sex slaves, would then disappear, the ministry director said.

Christian Aid Mission also reported that some children who wander away from their tents are never found again. "They might be kidnapped, abused, sold or lost," the Virginia-based charity said.

It said the lost young kids are often the children of refugee mothers who "are so desperate" that they leave their children at the refugee camp to find work outside the camp. "But the children then get lost and used wrongly," the charity said.

Meanwhile, a study conducted by Save the Children showed that children trapped in Syria are suffering from a mental health crisis after six years of war.

The charity said it interviewed more than 450 children, adolescents and adults across Syria and found out that many children are gripped by fear amid the constant shelling, airstrikes and bloodshed, with devastating psychological consequences.

Mental health experts said the children are suffering from a condition called "toxic stress," which can have a life-long impact on children's mental and physical health.

About half of the children said they do not feel safe at school or playing outside. The study also found that 78 percent of the children "feel grief and extreme sadness some or all of the time."