Today there are close to 30 million people living in slavery. Almost half of them are under the age of 18. That’s more than at any other time in the history of civilization. During the height of the American slave trade the average cost of a slave, adjusted for today’s inflation, was 40 thousand dollars. The average cost of a slave today is only 50 dollars. People have become disposable. It’s no longer smart “business” to give medical attention to a hurt or sick slave. The savvy slave owner just disposes of them and buys or kidnaps another. This is 2011. People’s lives should not be judged by their fiscal viability. But this is going on around the world right now, every two seconds a person is trafficked, that is, bought or sold into slavery. This crime of crimes, and yet so few voices crying out for justice; so few heroes risking their lives to abolish slavery. Where are the Harriet Tubmans of our generation? Where are the Harriet Beecher Stowes, the Sojourner Truths, the William Wilberforces, the Fredrick Douglasses?
Gary Haugen is one such modern day abolitionist, who not only cries out for justice, but fights for it. Whether it’s undercover investigating in a brothel putting together an airtight case for trial, or the subsequent raid to free underage girls from the tyranny of sexual perversion, Gary and his International Justice Mission team battle the evil of injustice with relentless passion and unwavering conviction. And although we're sure he would take exception to his name being placed alongside such great names of the anti-slavery movement, it’s important that there be a new batch of heroes for the younger generation to emulate, living, breathing heroes that can inspire us all as we battle a new generation of slave owners and traffickers hell-bent on gain by any means and power at any cost.
Conspiracy Of Hope had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Haugen and we found his answers tempered with deep wisdom, the kind that can only come from years in the field, and countless hours of deep reflection. We hope the intensity of his words and the conviction of his answers inspire you the same way they did us.
Many abolitionists have said they experienced a “call”. How did you come to the anti-slavery movement?
As a little boy, I came across a huge book in the public library about Abe Lincoln and found myself utterly enthralled with the horrific story of slavery in the United States. Lincoln described it as a great offence against God – and as a simple second grader looking at 19th century photos of scars across the back of a slave, that description seemed right to me. Then, thirty years later, Christian friends working amongst the poor overseas showed me pictures of a boy in leg irons in India and described brothels in the Philippines where young girls were held as sex slaves. I’d been raised with the simple command of Jesus to “do unto others ….” So, with these very personal images from my friends of very real slavery in our world today, the rest seemed quite straightforward.
Is there one particular historical or current abolitionist that you consider a hero?
Saju Matthew is a hero to me. He was born into a home of humble means in India – but miraculously ended up graduating from an Ivy League school and became an elite lawyer in America who never lost a case. Eventually, he felt God wanted to do something greater with it all. So now Saju and his wife and five children have all returned to India, where he leads IJM’s struggle against slavery in southern India. His team of fellow Indians has embarked on the most significant, direct confrontation with slavery in 150 years – and despite the violence and corruption, I don’t have any doubt that their grandkids are going to grow up reading in their history books about the generation that eliminated slavery from India’s soil.
As a member of the UN’s Center For Human Rights you were in charge of the horrific task of gathering evidence against the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. This included the exhumation of mass graves of tortured victims. How do you keep from becoming desensitized to suffering?
By relentless focus on the humanity, beauty and infinite dignity of the individual person. Despite the massive scale of human tragedy, the truth is, human beings suffer, hurt and die one at a time. This is what the Maker sees and never loses sight of. So I seek to his vision and view of the individual. But in the midst of dark evil and human suffering, I also must intentionally and vigorously seek out refreshment in beauty, light, joy and laughter. Joy is the oxygen that sustains service over the long haul and keeps us from hardening our hearts against the pain of our own compassion.
Above, Gary revisits a massacre site in Rwanda. What has been the lowest point in your fight against slavery?
The lowest point was at the beginning, when we got started in the mid-nineties. Very few had even heard of contemporary slavery. The term “trafficking” had barely been invented. And those who knew anything about it were pretty sure there was nothing that could be done about it. As Nelson Mandela once said, “It looks impossible until it’s done.” The hardest nowadays may be when a child rescued from a brothel is in a nice aftercare home but nevertheless perishes from AIDS contracted in the brothel. I don’t have a good quote for that.
What about your greatest day?
There have been a lot of great days. I will never forget meeting the girls that we rescued from brothels in Cambodia when they were 6, 7, 8 years old and seeing them as thriving, healthy teenagers in school 5 years later. Or just a day spent watching the expertise, courage and mastery of our indigenous staff as they lead the fight against slavery in their own community. That’s a pretty great day because the future of the fight is so well secured.
Is there one story that stands out from your years of fighting slavery?
Kunthy or Kumar’s stories both stand out- they’re both in the 10th Anniversary Edition of Good News About Injustice. (Kumar’s is on p. 143; Kunthy’s is on page 180)
There are an estimated 35 million orphans in India alone, with 18 million of those being homeless, what can realistically be done to get them out of the reach of traffickers?
The most important thing we can do, I believe, is make traffickers afraid of going to jail. We know the traffickers – and they are not brave. They only abduct and sell kids because they (and their buyers) think they can get away with it. If they think they’ll go to jail, they leave the kids alone and find something else to do. And it’s not that hard, because if the customers can find the trafficking victims (and they do), then so can the police. So when the police and justice authorities start protecting the kids – the fight is pretty much over.
Is there a ground zero for modern slavery?
There are a few, but I’d rather not alert the opposition at this point. I would, however, mention a place that I think is one of the ground zeroes in the fight against slavery – and that is Cebu, the Philippines. The Gates Foundation helped IJM establish a pilot project in this city to see if IJM could help local law enforcement actually reduce the victimization of children in sex slavery by objectively measurable amounts. And indeed, at the mid-term assessment of the project, outside auditors found a 70% reduction from the initial survey of the victimization of children in the commercial sex trade. This is huge – and we think the impact of the project will only be strengthened. The success of this project is bringing great hope to an issue where so many have been paralyzed by despair.
Justice seems to be at the core of your Christian faith. Do you think there exists a discontinuity between faith communities and their commitment to justice?
For a variety of reasons, there are some dysfunctions in our churches that insist on trying to put the commands of Christ – to love God and love your neighbor – in opposition to each other. Of course, what Jesus and his disciples have been teaching for 2,000 years is that we can’t do one the way we ought without the other – and we have really had to work hard over the last hundred years in contriving a teaching that would separate out the two. Indeed, Jesus put faith and justice together in Matthew 23:23 by calling them “the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith.” Fortunately, I think this newer generation sees that separating love of God and love of man is ridiculous for the follower of Jesus.
IJM is very careful about not leaving a western cultural imprint on the rescued victims of slavery. How important is this for them in the reintegration process?
This is a no-brainer for us. The victims of brutal injustice that we serve are being re-integrated back into their own communities; they are not being transported to some foreign or western context. And our teams are exceedingly well positioned for this task because almost all of the IJM staff in the field are non-westerners who are simply serving their neighbors in their own community. Our indigenous staff own the mission, innovate the path, and make the commitment required to restore our clients to wholeness in their community.
Trailer for IJM's documentary At The End Of Slavery narrated by Danny Glover.
In the anti-slavery movement, is there presently an inordinate need for certain types of professionals?
What I see is that a lot of people know how to educate, teach and campaign about slavery – but very few people know how to practically go to where the slaves are, to get them out of slavery, provide a safe place of healing for them, and then see the perpetrators actually brought to justice. There is, therefore, a great need, I think, for public justice professionals (criminal investigators and lawyers) and social workers who can work in the world’s poorest communities to bring direct rescue and restoration to slaves, and then work with local authorities to actually send the criminals to jail. There is also a great need for community mobilizers in these indigenous communities where slavery is tolerated to change the local political will to do something about it.
If someone was only going to read one book on modern slavery, which one should it be?
There are a lot of young people wanting to enter the anti-slavery movement. What is the most important thing they can do to prepare themselves?
Be humble, patient learners – about love, from God. The struggle against the aggressive, resilient evil of slavery is far too difficult to be sustainable without the deeper transformation of the interior to a place of deep compassion, courage and commitment. The slave masters and traffickers know that the "do-gooders" show up late and quit early, and they’re not intimidated. What they do not have an answer for, however, is fearless sacrificial love that does not go away.
For more from International Justice Mission’s president and CEO visit IJM.org.
Cebu is a province in the Philippines, consisting of Cebu Island and 167 surrounding islands. The City of Cebu is the capital of Cebu and is the Philippines' main domestic shipping port, home to about 80% of the country's domestic shipping companies. Cebu also holds the second largest number of international flights in the Philippines and is a significant center of commerce, trade and industry in the region. Cebu City is the center of a metropolitan area called Metro Cebu and has a total population of about 2 million people.
As with any port city, especially one with commercial ports of any size, including many in the U.S., human trafficking is always a possibility and most often a distinct probability. Such is the case in Cebu. Of the 100,000 sexually exploited children in all of the Philippines estimates range that 10 to 40 thousand minor girls have been trafficked into prostitution in and around the metropolitan Cebu area. Add to Cebu's commercial ports the fact that the region is billed as a tourist destination where one can mix business with pleasure, and it becomes evident how Cebu has become one of the top five areas in the world for child prostitution and sex tourism.
But there is good news. There are those standing in the gap, those demanding justice, those defending the defenseless, those healing the broken girls and giving them back their stolen lives.
Four years ago International Justice Mission opened a new office in Cebu and began working with the local government to stop traffickers who had been operating with impunity for many years. Today more than 250 trafficking victims have been freed and more than 100 suspected traffickers in Metro Cebu have been charged. Independent researchers found that this concerted effort, called Project Lantern, has led to the number of minors available for exploitation in the commercial sex industry in Metro Cebu plummeting by 79 percent. By being proactive and literally changing the political atmosphere of a city, girls can be rescued before the abuse even happens as in Glenna's case (abridged from IJM's website):
Glenna had been spending time with friends when her group was joined by a friend’s acquaintance. The man invited her to join him in a waiting taxi, and when she refused, he physically forced her into the vehicle. Glenna quickly realizes that the man was a pimp, and that he planned to sell her when they arrived at a nearby hotel. But when she and her trafficker arrived at the hotel, it was the criminal, not the teenage girl, who was most vulnerable. The pimp had been under surveillance for months by IJM investigators and local police — and the waiting “customer” was an undercover police officer partnering with IJM. Glenna was rescued before ever being abused; the pimp was placed under arrest and taken to jail. Today, Glenna is a happy young wife and mother. She has graduated from IJM Cebu’s job-readiness training program and is grateful for and proud of her new career, working at a local bakery.
Many more stories of rescued girls can be found on IJM's website. More about IJM's Project Lantern and the entire text of the report can be read here and donations to IJM for their continued fight against injustice can be made here.
Another group, My Refuge House, "provides an immediate safe home to young women and children rescued from sex-trafficking in the Philippines. [They] are dedicated to alleviating the effects of abuse and trauma sustained by these victims."
Above is an artist's rendering of the future permanent home of My Refuge House. The new facility will allow the improved care of sex-trafficked victims and expand the reach to more children and teens in the Philippines. But as with most NGO's and other charitable organizations, budgetary shortfalls continue to hamper their efforts. Donations to My Refuge House can be made here. And more about the building project and the services My Refuge House offers can be found here.
MRH's director Crystal Sprague describes her experience of helping rescued girls: "When a girl first comes into the building or into aftercare, you can see the despair and hopelessness in her eyes, and then you watch how she changes when she realizes she is surrounded by people who love her, people who believe in her. You watch her life slowly begin to change. When I've seen girls in those initial stages and then get to see them progress... it's simply amazing!" To get updates from Crystal direct from the Philippines visit her blog.
IJM's president Gary Haugen sums up the reasons for the reactions of rescued girls , "What they do not expect is fearless, sacrificial love that does not go away."
Please partner with Conspiracy Of Hope in funding these two incredible anti-trafficking organizations. Let us resolve to be fearless and to love sacrificially, and until the evil of human trafficking does, let us never, ever, go away.
Civilized society has at its foundation the rule of law and the expectation by the average citizen that those laws will be enforced, with no respect to gender, race, age or financial status. Those that benefit most from civilized society are those most susceptible to being exploited by the uncivilized elements of society, namely the feeble, the sick, and especially children. And so it is, as it has always been, by the very definition, that the defenseless need defenders.
Today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Today is the day when the evil of human trafficking comes under the eye of national scrutiny once again. Today is the day for steeling the national resolve against this evil. Today is the day when we decide if we are a civil society dedicated to protecting the most susceptible among us.
During the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade, over ten million people were bought and sold. It took tireless individuals, who would not be silenced, who demanded the equality of the law, to slowly turn the tide of public opinion in America against the diabolical practice of slavery. And yet today there are more slaves than ever. Today there are close to 30 million people living in some form of slavery, many of those are children, all living in societies with laws to protect them, laws that make their bondage illegal. Today more than ever the voice of civilized society must be heard over the machine of commerce that still profits from cheap, slave labor. Today the voice of civilized society must scream to be heard over the decadent laughter of the pimps and johns who rape little girls. Today civilized society must speak out, with relentless abandon, for those who have no voice.
But how?
1. By supporting legislation that allocates funds for our government to help other countries who have the political will but lack the resources to fight human trafficking. In January, International Justice Mission will be working with House and Senate members who are passionate about ending slavery to introduce the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), legislation which will provide the State Department’s Trafficking In Persons (TIP) Office the resources it needs to protect vulnerable people from slavery around the world. We will let you know when this legislation makes it to committee as it will take all of our voices speaking out together, telling our congressman that we support it, to get it signed into law.
2. We can, as generations past had to, stop enjoying cheap goods made with slave labor. Fairtrade offers resources for each of us as consumers to have confidence that the products we consume are slave free. Not For Sale Campaign has a Free To Work Initiative, including an Iphone app that lets you instantly know what brands are certified slave labor free. Rugmark International has a project called Goodweave that is a watchdog in the carpet and rug industry. We can speak out against irresponsible companies by boycotting their goods until they come into compliance.
3. We can live simpler lives and reduce consumption to free up our financial resources and make them available to groups that are on the front-lines of the fight against human trafficking. We can live below our means and use the surplus to fund organizations that are investing into the lives of rescued slaves, healing their brokenness and giving them hope for the future. Groups like:
And finally, we can decide today to be tireless in our pursuit of justice. To fight with the same indefatigable passion for the enslaved, the trafficked, the sexually exploited, as we would if they were our children, our parents, or our spouses. Today the tide can begin to turn. Today civilized society can say no more to this evil. Today we can offer hope for the hopeless. Today we can be the defenders. Today we we can, today we must, because tomorrow is too late.
Every year there are upwards of 50 thousand foreign nationals trafficked into the US. Some for forced labor, many for sex. But there are also tens of thousands of American kids trafficked each year within our borders. Many are the 300,000 homeless kids living on our streets but some are taken from our neighborhoods, from our schools, from our malls and in the case of 17 year old Shauna, a sleepover....
"I was the new girl at school looking for friends," says Shauna. Another new girl in town invited Shauna for a sleepover in her Pensacola, Fla., neighborhood. A man posing as the girl's father slipped Shauna a drug. She woke up to a nightmare.
“My legs were being held,” she says. “And my head ... my hands were tied like this, above my head. And I remember saying, 'No, please don't do this. Stop.'"
While her parents frantically searched for her, Shauna was drugged, raped and beaten. Investigator Brad Dennis suspected Shauna was a victim of human trafficking, a growing problem in the Florida Panhandle. Investigators spent four days looking for Shauna, she was found but the traffickers escaped. (cbsnews.com)
Or in Debbies case, her driveway...
Fifteen-year-old "Debbie" is the middle child in a close-knit Air Force family from suburban Phoenix, and a straight-A student . Unbelievably, police say Debbie was kidnapped from her own driveway with her mother right inside.
One evening Debbie, said she got a call from a casual friend, Bianca, who asked to stop by Debbie's house. Wearing a pair of Sponge Bob pajamas, Debbie went outside to meet Bianca, who drove up in a Cadillac with two older men, Mark and Matthew. After a few minutes of visiting, Bianca said they were going to leave.
"So I went and I started to go give her a hug, and that's when she pushed me in the car. "As they sped away from her house, Debbie said that one of the men told Bianca to tie her up and said he threatened to shoot Bianca if she didn't comply. "And she put tape over my eyes," Debbie said. "While she was putting tape on me, Matthew told me if I screamed or acted stupid, he'd shoot me. So I just stayed quiet."
Debbie said her captors drove her around the streets of Phoenix for hours. Exhausted and confused, she was finally taken to an apartment 25 miles from her home. She said one of her captors put a gun to her head. Debbie said she was then drugged by her captors and other men were brought into the room, where she was gang raped.
"And then that's when I heard them say there was a middle-aged guy in the living room that wanted to take advantage of a 15-year-old girl," she said. "And then he goes, 'Bend her over. I want to see what I'm working with.' And that's when he started to rape me. And I see more guys, four other guys had come into the room. And they all had a turn. It was really scary." After the horrifying gang rape, police say Debbie was trapped in one of Phoenix's roughest neighborhoods. In a rundown, garbage-strewn apartment, her captors were trying to break her down.
"They were asking me if I was hungry," she said. "I told them no. That's when they put a dog biscuit in my mouth, trying to get me to eat it."
After a sleepless night, Debbie was tossed back into the car and again driven around Phoenix. She said they talked to her about prostitution, and that one of the men forced her to have sex with him in the car and then later in a park. The same man took her back to his apartment, and Debbie said, "I ended up in the dog kennel."
Greg Scheffer, an officer with the Phoenix police department, said Debbie was kept in a small dog crate for several days. Lying on her back in the tiny space, her whole body went numb."She was subject to various abuses while in there," Scheffer said. "This is all part of the breaking down period where [he] gains complete control of this girl."
Unbeknownst to Debbie, police say her captors had put an ad on Craig's List. Shortly after the ad ran, men began arriving at the apartment at all hours of the day and night demanding sex from her. She said she had to comply. "I had no other choice," she said. Debbie says she was earning her pimp hundreds of dollars a night. Scheffer said Debbie was forced to have sex with at least 50 men -- and that's not counting the men who gang-raped her on a periodic basis. For more than 40 days, police say Debbie remained captive, often beaten and forced daily to have sex of the most degrading kind. During that time, she said she did not try to escape because her captors had done what police say so many pimps do -- threatened her and terrified her. Debbie said that the pimps told her they would go after her family, and they even threatened to throw battery acid on her 19-month-old niece.
"After they told me that, I didn't care what happened to me as long as my family stayed alive," she said. "And that's pretty much what I had in my head. Staying there to keep my family alive." (abcnews.go.com)
Each year, 2 million kids are sexually exploited. Close to a million of those children are trafficked. All over the world, every day, well over 2500 kids are bought and sold. Their childhoods stolen from them, their innocence destroyed. Please help Conspiracy Of Hope stop this evil. Please fund these organizations that are on the front-lines stopping the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children. Thank you. International Justice Mission
A new study by the Parent's Television Council shows an alarming trend in prime-time television, the widespread sexualization of underage girls and boys. In their study they found that underage kids, especially girls, were presented in sexual situations more frequently and with more casualness than that of their adult counterparts. Fashion seems to be following suit with companies such as Diesel making their intentions crystal clear, as with ads like the one below. Sex sells, and for companies like Limited Too, even it seems to kids, as they marketed a whole line of kids thongs a couple years back.
In Japan the obsession with sex and young girls can only be described as mass fetishism. In 1998, Interpol estimated that nearly 80% of the world's Internet-based child pornography websites originated in Japan. This is the same society that had vending machines that dispensed used girl's panties and continues to elevate the sexuality of barely pubescent children through graphic novelization. Lolicon, short for Lolita complex, is one of many types of pornographic renderings of children. Adult versions of Anime and Manga populate the shelves of DVD and book stores. This was one of few "clean" Lolicon images we could find...
Closer to home magazines that boast the title "Barely Legal" and "Just 18" are some of the tamer porn magazines that blur the lines of what is sexually acceptable, depicting girls that look as if they are 14 and 15. And then there is 16 year old Miley Cyrus posing naked with only a piece of fabric draped across her, apparently with her father's consent. What message is this sending young girls who idolize Cyrus? What is this re-enforcing in young girls desperate for their dad's approval?
As child sexuality becomes more pervasive, more socially acceptable, groups like NAMBLA, the National Association for Man Boy Love, up their rhetoric, and break down the resolve of decent society. Is it any wonder that many of the young boys trafficked into America end up in pedophile rings. Susan Song put together a heart-rending report on child sex-tourism. Here is the text. According to her report, American men traveling abroad make up 25% of all sex tourists. One estimate is that half of those sexual encounters are with minors. Travel brochures offering exotic, very young girls, are easily found in some Men's magazines.
Some Japanese men believe that sleeping with a virgin can bring great luck, renewed vitality, and sexual prowess. Japanese men traveling to Thailand are, percentage wise, the largest group visiting brothels. Many pay large premiums to rape a virgin girl. Their American and European counterparts aren't far behind in their desire for underage girls. In Cambodia 35% of prostitutes are underage. In Mumbai, India there are an estimated 100,000 underage girls in brothels. Supply meets demand, and in societies that continue to fetishize children, demand increases, desire increases, and more and more children are bought and sold into sexual slavery.
Please help stop the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children by supporting organizations that fight this evil.
In case you were off planet...traffic is gridlocked, tempers are fomenting, and the great machine of retail is whining in high gear, wrapped in red and green....Happy Holidays!!
We at Conspiracy Of Hope want to extend you our warmest wishes in that regard. May your winter be white with days full of cheer, of good food, and family and friends. May your nights be warm with roaring fires and peaceful reflection.
And while we are enjoying those things, may we be ever mindful of the children of the world still enslaved. Some, God forbid, by manufacturers who use their labor to make the goods we give as gifts. May we always remember the young girls caged in brothels, may we keep them dear to our hearts, and for those young boys trapped in conflicts as child soldiers, may we never forget to keep them in our prayers.
And if you can, why not send them a gift. There are several organizations that offer a chance for you to give children freedom this holiday season. Some even have gifts made by freed slaves and survivors of sex trafficking. Here are some links:
In his book "Children Of Hope" Vernon Brewer asks "What would you do if your children were so weak from hunger, so in pain but too weak to cry? Would you do whatever it took to feed them?" The question answers itself really. But would you steal? Would you sell your body? Would you be susceptible to every false promise? Would you be susceptible to being trafficked? Would you consider selling one child to save four others? What would you do if these were your children....
Kevin Carter's Pulitzer prize winning picture of a starving Sudanese child. Below children eating bugs to survive.
And because they are not our children. Because they are far away, with dark skin, in countries whose names we cannot pronounce. Do we care less? Or maybe not at all?
Hunger and hunger related illness kills 40,000 children a day. 14 million children a year. That's the equivalent of eighty-five Boeing 747s crashing everyday and killing every passenger. Or 34,000 crashes a year. That would stay in the headlines. Every headline, of every news show, every day. But starvation doesn't. Human Trafficking. Doesn't.
The desperation that those statistics represent is the daily reality for a fifth of the world. It is one of the gravest factors that leads to exploitation. If we are going to stop human trafficking in our lifetime we are going to have to remove the precipitating factors that create the environment where the cancer of trafficking thrives.
I almost didn't post the picture below. To be honest I hoped it was a fake. A photo-shopped piece of journalistic propaganda. Apparently not. You may not want to look. It may make you ashamed to be human....I know it does me...
Hunger, that makes a child do this, should not be able to exist in a world where so much excess and waste exist. This is not ok.
Here are some organizations that fight global hunger:
