Human Trafficking in the News 1-28-12

Stories of human trafficking, child exploitation, child prostitution and forced labor in the news. 


As I checked the days headlines for stories related to these topics it seemed to me there were 5 times as many stories of exploitation each more grotesque, more horrifying than the next. I hope it is because of the concerted effort to expose these evils, but if anything it shows that the work to be done is great and that it will take all of us being deeply committed and tireless, to end these evils in our lifetime. Thank you for educating yourself and caring about justice. (Click the bold headings to go to the full articles.) 

An African witch-doctor. 

Witchcraft: The demonic realities of human trafficking: African and South American girls flee their captors and live to tell of their harrowing escapes and the sadistic rituals that their traffickers tried to use to enslave the young girl's minds.


Human Sacrifice in Uganda: 'In Uganda, traffickers buy and sell children to use their genitals, heads, and blood for ritual sacrifice. The U.S. Department of States recently reported 9000 children missing in Uganda over the last four years. Traffickers transport children both inside Uganda and to other countries for use in ritual sacrifices. In 2008, police arrested a witchdoctor couple and a real estate mogul, Godfrey Kajubi, for trafficking 12 year old Joseph for ritual sacrifice. According to the police, Kajubi promised the witchdoctor couple $4021 in exchange for the heads of four children, which he planned to use for ritual.'

Young child working at a gold mine.

Forced child labor in Gold mines and young girls raped for good luck: In Ganzourgou Province new gold veins are found and thousands of young children are exploited in these mines. Boys 'dig, crush, and carry rocks, facing great risks on a daily basis. The young girls are responsible for carrying water, crushing stones and rebuilding. Some of them look after their younger siblings while their mothers are at work. Owing to various superstitions linking sex to finding gold, the little girls also become victims of sexual exploitation or prostitution on the sites.'


New York Author trafficks girls from Brazil, Hungary and France: 3 women promised gainful employment and green cards get instead coercion and sexual deviancy.

Woman trades sexual favors with a child for painkillers: Below,  Debra Annmarie Blackmon, 25, and Tony Marcel Hammond, 23, face sex trafficking and other charges. The couple even gave the child marijuana to help her complete the act.

Selling girls on the web, Nicholas Kristof takes on Backpage.com: The classified ads for The Village Voice have been used all to often to sexually exploit minors. The magazine claims it is a matter of censorship vs. free speech. Pulitzer Prize winning author Kristof takes them to task.


The world's 5 most dangerous countries for women: Incredible resource from Rueters as published on trust.org that highlights the most dangerous places in the world to be born female. The map below. Please click the link to read about the most egregious crimes against woman. From the 1152 women and girls raped everyday in the Congo, to the 70-80% of young women in Afghanistan in forced marriages.

Other heartbreaking statistics from the Rueter's chart:


1000 honor killing in Pakistan every year.


95% of woman in Somalia face forced genital mutilation.


50 million. The deficit of women in India to men. Mass infanticide of baby girls has eradicated a whole generation of women equal to the population of Texas, Florida and Tennessee combined. 

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From all of us at Conspiracy Of Hope. Thank you for being a voice for the voiceless.

Human Trafficking Awareness Day 1-11-2012

Human Trafficking Awareness day is today. A day when we as a nation stand in solidarity with the 2 million people sold into slavery each year. With the 27 million people enslaved in the world today. A day when our national conscience is once again offended by such a great evil. A day when we say no more!


This past year has seen an unprecedented reaction against the demonic plague of trafficking. I would like to take a few moments to encourage you with how far we've come, to show you what we can accomplish with first world resources and the resolve to never tolerate this madness on our watch. These stories and links are in no order of importance. Nor are these the most important stories of the year. Every single act of anti-slavery is ever important, every voice of every abolitionist is ever powerful to bring about change. No one should ever feel that their accomplishments are less than anothers, it WILL take us all to win this fight. 

Sex trafficking victim Dai gives a fellow resident a tearful hug goodbye as she graduates from her year-long stay with the Transitions Global victim aftercare program. Dai is returning home to her family.

Click on the bold headers for links to the entire story!


CNN Freedom Project: One year of anti-trafficking features by one of the largest News channels in the world. From their site "This year CNN will join the fight to end modern-day slavery and shine a spotlight on the horrors of modern-day slavery, amplify the voices of the victims, highlight success stories and help unravel the complicated tangle of criminal enterprises trading in human life. A PROBLEM THAT CAN'T BE IGNORED!"


Nefarious: Merchant Of Souls: A big budget, big production documentary about sex-trafficking. From their website: "Nefarious: Merchant of Souls, exposes the disturbing trends in modern sex slavery. From the very first scene, Nefarious ushers you into the nightmare of sex slavery that hundreds of thousands experience daily. You’ll see where slaves are sold (often in developed, affluent countries), where they work and are confined. You’ll hear first-hand interviews with real victims and traffickers, along with expert analysis from international humanitarian leaders. From initial recruitment to victim liberation––and everything between––the previously veiled underworld of sex slavery is uncovered in the groundbreaking, tell-all Nefarious: Merchant of Souls." Trailer below.





Google donates 11.5 million dollars to combat Human Trafficking: PCmag.com reports about the search engine mega-brand's donation: "The money will go toward the creation of a coalition between various advocacy groups, led by International Justice Mission (IJM), a group that works around the world to rescue people from forced labor and sexual exploitation. IJM will partner with other groups like Polaris Project, Slavery Footprint, and others for a multi-year project, beginning in 2012. Funds will be used to improve the infrastructure and resources that enforce anti-slavery legislation overseas, promote awareness of the problem domestically, and help push for laws against it in other countries."


42,000 college kids unite to end sex-trafficking: a Christian Conference at the Georgia World Congress Center has drawn 42,000 students from all 50 states and 30 countries.

The 42k college kids at Passion 2012

"There's 27 million slaves in the world today, that's men women and children forced to work," said Bryson Vogeltanz with Passion 2012. "The sex trafficking issue is here in Atlanta and all over the world."


In lines that snaked down the hallways of the Georgia World Congress Center, students waited their turn to give their own money that will go toward organizations working to prevent, rescue and restore those who've suffered. The goal was a million dollars.  By 3:30 Wednesday afternoon the goal had already been reached with thousands still in line to give. Total donations reached the 3 million dollar mark!!!


New California anti-trafficking law: From the Law.com story: "The new California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, effective as of Jan. 1, applies to any company with $100 million in worldwide sales and some connection to California — which could be a statewide chain of stores or a single processing and distribution plant. The law commands businesses to make full disclosure about their supply chains and whether they regularly check them for possible slavery or trafficking conditions — and if so, what they do about it." 


How California and the rest of the US states are performing based on Shared Hope International's report card.

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Thank you for taking a moment to look back on 2011 with us, at what we've accomplished as a nation. And thank you for joining the fight to end this evil in our lifetime. From all of us at Conspiracy Of Hope, thank you for caring about justice, thank you for being a voice for the voiceless victims of human trafficking. Thank you.

Human Trafficking In The News 1-3-12

This is the first installment for 2012 of our regular updates about the international crisis of Human Trafficking and the exploitation of children. It is with renewed determination that we find ourselves at the beginning of this year, recommitting our voice in both passion and volume for the voiceless victims of human trafficking. We are asking you to join us, and we would be deeply humbled to work shoulder to shoulder, arm and arm, to end this scourge once and for all. Thank you. Click on the bold headers of each section for the link to the full stories.

President Obama addressing the nation on Jan. 1, the 148th anniversary of the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation.

President Obama names January National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month: In  his remarks the US President recommitted the nation "to bringing an end to this inexcusable human rights abuse."


Forced Marriage in Afghanistan, trafficking by a different name: 60 percent of the trafficking in Afghanistan is internal and much of this involves forced marriages, many that result in the young girl prostituted by her arranged husband. And in a related story...


8 year old Yemeni girl is now legally divorced from her 28 year-old husband:  In response to a question from Judge Mohammed al-Qadhi if the "couple" had consummated their relationship 28-year-old Faez Ali Thameur said yes BUT that he "did not beat her". As if that clarifies it for us, makes the whole child rape issue a moot point. Just a technicality for the Yemeni court system, file the necessary paperwork and then the child can go on about her 8 year-old life, happily divorced, and oh yeah, intimately acquainted with a FRICKIN' 28 year old pedophile!!!!!

"I am happy that I am divorced now. I will be able to go back to school," eight year old Nojud Mohammed Ali said, after a public hearing in Sanaa's court of first instance.

Texas man pleads guilty to possession of child porn: Authorities found 120 gigs, or about 20 thousand pornographic videos and images of young children on 29 year old Jonathan Ryan Vittitow's computer. Including messages where he solicited undisclosed individuals to drug three children so he could rape them. He faces 15-30 years in jail.


Victoria's Dirty Secret: "In Burkina Faso, where child labor is endemic, paying premiums for organic and fair-trade cotton has created fresh incentives for exploitation. A program there has attracted subsistence farmers who say they can't grow "ethically sourced” cotton without forcing children into their fields. Bloomberg News spent more than six weeks reporting in West Africa to capture the plight of Clarisse Kambire, below, a 13 year old who is kept out of school, malnourished and beaten."

"By the time Clarisse picked her first harvest in 2010, Victoria's Secret was becoming the fair trade program's only buyer instead of the most prominent, according to Georges Guebre , the program's leader. An executive for Victoria's Secret’s parent company says the amount of cotton it buys from Burkina Faso is minimal, but it takes the child-labor allegations seriously."

Sexism in the British Press: The sexual objectification of women and children and the Leveson Inquiry's response to it. Women's rights groups are documenting for the Government inquiry the irresponsible nature of reporting when it comes to sexual violence against women and the overall bent in British tabloids to present women and girls as sexual objects. A recent story involving 6 soccer players gang-raping 12 year-olds had the victims referred to as "lolitas" and the demonic act itself was called an 'orgy'. Subsequently, to prove the pandemic nature of sexism in British society, all six of the defendants were later freed after an appeal to court judge Lord Justice Moses. Judge 'Lord Justice Moses', who perhaps has the most pathetic and disgustingly ironic name ever, ruled that the 12 year old girls 'wanted to have sex'.  Um.....What?!?!


HOW THE HELL IS THAT A RULING!!???!! Either the age of consent in Britain is 16 or it's not.  Either rape is a statutory offence- created by section 5 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Which CLEARLY states that a person commits the offence of rape if


(a) they intentionally penetrate....you get the idea....without consent AND/OR
(b) the other person is under 16!!!!!!!!!!!


-Or its not!!!! Dear Judge 'Lord Justice Moses' you are now complicit in the reckless endangerment of a minor. You have enabled other over-sexed, meat-headed men hopped up on testosterone to make sport of the violation of children!!!!!!!!! By English law and all other moral codes you too are a rapist. Lock yourself up and throw away the frickin KEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Stop the planet....I want off.

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From all of us at Conspiracy Of Hope, thank you for caring about justice and child's rights, and have a Happy New Year!