Sr Stanislaus Kennedy

Committed to the Abolition of Human Trafficking

Sr. Stanislaus Kennedy, or Sr Stan as she is affectionately known, is a visionary and social innovator and a member of the congregation of Religious Sisters of Charity since 1958. Sr Stan has dedicated her life to alleviating the suffering of others and coming up with innovative responses to real social need. For over fifty years now she has pioneered, campaigned, explored and developed a range of inspiring social innovations to benefit of thousands of people who have experienced exclusion in its many forms. Sr Stan has been an advocate and a visionary in relation to a range of issues – poverty, homelessness, immigration and more recently issue of mental health and mediation.

Sr Stan consistently applies a gender lens to her work and this is evidenced through strategic and ground-breaking campaigns on homeless women, women and girls who have been trafficked into the sex industry.

Sr Stan is currently heavily involved in the Turn Off the Red Light Campaign which aims to challenge the current perceptions surrounding prostitution in Ireland. The campaign aims to introduce legislation which recognises that prostitution is a physically, mentally and emotionally harmful industry, with thousands of women being exploited and abused daily.

Furthermore Sr. Stan is tirelessly campaigning for greater protection of migrant women and their children who are victims of domestic violence through access and provision of crucial services.

Relevant Information:

Prostitution and Sex trafficking in Ireland

The scale of the problem: Trafficking women and girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation is a modern, global form of slavery. In 2007, the Immigrant Council of Ireland commissioned research designed to map the scale of Ireland’s sex industry and to uncover the scale of exploitation of women and girls.

The resulting report, Globalisation, Sex Trafficking and Prostitution – The Experiences of Migrant Women in Ireland, uncovered the shocking reality of rape, abuse and sexual exploitation of victims of sex trafficking. It documents the physical, emotional and psychological harm these women and girls suffered. The report was based on interviews with women and the examination of data and information from service providers. It revealed that, over a 21-month period from 2007 to 2008, 102 women and girls who were victims of trafficking presented at services. (This used the internationally-agreed definition of victims of trafficking.) Of these, 11 were children at the time they were trafficked.