Troubled actress Lindsay Lohan returned to Los Angeles Saturday after a week in India. She visited the Sanlaap Women and Children’s shelter just outside Calcutta for a documentary on the trafficking of women and children for the BBC.
Lohan tweeted enthusiastically about the planned trip before her departure:
“Going to make one of my lifelong dreams on my list of things to do in this lifetime!!!!! Wish me luck! fill you guys in when I return to USA”
She also inexplicably tweeted this photo with the message “Count your blessings…. Please try and do something to make a difference for others.” (The photo is so out of focus that I’m not sure what it’s of, or where she is. Post your guesses in the comments.)
This being Lindsay Lohan, of course the trip attracted both controversy and confusion. After claiming that she helped save 40 children from being trafficked (a tweet that has been since taken down), activists lashed out.
The Telegraph reports:
A leading social activist and lawyer, known only as Bhuwan, of the campaign group Bachpan Bachao Andolan, accused Lohan of portraying dangerous child rescue operations as superficial events, which could be carried out in a day by passing celebrities.
… According to [social activist and lawyer] Bhuwan, they were freed on Tuesday, hours before Lohan arrived in India and a day before she and her BBC Three film crew visited the Ashram rehabilitation centre where the children were taken before being returned to their families. “She was not even in the country when this raid happened,” he said.
For their part, the BBC says Lohan was merely misunderstood. “We would like to stress that she did not say she was present at the raid, this is a misinterpretation. She was merely referring to a raid that happened connected to child trafficking – the subject of the programme,” a spokesman told the paper.
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