You Can't Go Home Again...

...the much quoted and still true for that words by Tom Wolfe to describe some essential alienation of the human condition: you grow, you leave, just don't ever try going back.

A thought in mind catching the latter part of a programme on modern child slavery tonight.

Cambodian children trafficked into prostitution once released - if ever sadly - are not returned home but sent to schools and foundations that can help them to recover from the physical and emotional scars of their terrible lives, on the simple pragmatic ground that all too often it was their families who sold them into prostitution in the first place and that, therefore, to send them home would merely result in too many of them being re-sold back to the brothels.

In India, on the other hand, children released from the slavery of the sari sweatshops are, as port of first call, sent back to the homes that sold them into illegal bonded labour. The result in one case - noted in the commentary as rather typical - was too painful to witness.

A young lad - no more than twelve years old - is met on his return to the house in which he grew up by his wailing, weeping, screaming mother.

Her tears and cries though are not from the joy of being re-united with her lost boy, but howls of disbelieving horror that he has come home to "add to my suffering." Poor child looks utterly bemused at having to act out this unhappy family scene for the benefit of the cameras. He tells his mother to "Shut up", but as he previously acknowledged what he was bringing back to the family was not a son, but merely yet another mouth to feed.

The Indian Government promises money to families whose children are returned to them from slavery. The money frequently fails to arrive.

Not all though is well either in Cambodia. Too many of the children - some no more than six or seven - are so severely traumatised that they simply cannot trust any adult who shows them real compassion and love.

Two out of ten flee back to the brothels. The place they have come to call home.