On Monday, my old friend Chris and I took an opportunity to go see a movie together. It’s rare we get to do that, mostly because he’s a busy guy with work and with lots of family activities. But for this occasion, we both wanted to get to this film. since, to us, It was not just a movie.

The event was a special showing of a film called “The Abolitionists”.

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There are more human slaves in the world today than ever before in history, and truth be told, the chief driver of that industry is an unchecked demand for sex.

Authorities say that worldwide, almost 30 million people each year are forced into slavery. The United States is home to nearly 325 million people today, so the number enslaved each year globally is equivalent to about 9% of Americans being enslaved this year.

In the United States alone, 15,000 people are enslaved annually, forced into debasing and illegal activities.

Nearly a quarter of a million people are trafficked across international borders each year, and of these, 80% are female, and 50% are children.

Straight up, 3/4 of trafficking is for sex. 80% of those trafficked end up sexually exploited. 4 out of 5 trafficked victims are employed in sex slavery, as prostitutes, sex slaves, in forced marriages, or in pornography. The bulk of he rest of the trafficked are exploited for labor, while a portion are sadly trafficked for organ harvesting, and, frighteningly, there is a growing market for children sold to be used as suicide bombers and soldiers in armed conflicts.

Approximately 20% of all internet pornography involves children who are victims of human trafficking. That’s 1 in 5 pornographic items.

In the U.S., the average age of recruitment into sex slavery is 12-14 years old.

An estimated 30,000 victims of sex trafficking die each year from abuse, disease, torture, and neglect. Eighty percent of those sold into sexual slavery are under 24, and some are as young as six years old.

Trafficking is a 31 billion dollar industry each year. The average price paid for a slave is $90, and a human trafficker can earn 20 times what he or she paid for a girl. A 2003 study in the Netherlands found that, on average, a single sex slave earned her pimp at least $250,000 a year

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“The Abolitionist” is a unique film that focuses on the efforts of Tim Ballard, a former Homeland Security and CIA trafficking specialist, and his private organization to infiltrate and dismantle trafficking organizations, featuring undercover footage from rescue operations around the world. Ballard and his team take you into a child-selling orphanage and into staged sex parties to show you the faces of exploiters and the exploited- children, who early on are thrown into a dark underworld that takes from them freedom, their innocence, and in most cases, hope.

Ballard lets us see that exploiters too often look and sound very much like you and I, and that the exploited are too often kids who were often thrown into their horrid situation by family, by poverty, or by disaster. Ballard also shows us that there is hope for the enslaved if normal people choose to take up their cause and to fight for their freedom and healing.

Which takes courage. And awareness. And small decisions each day.

If we don’t forget they are out there.

If I don’t forget they are out there.

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Photo Credit: OurRescue.org

“The Abolitionists” Movie Website

Statistic Sources:
What is Trafficking?, rescue:freedom international
55 Little Known Facts… About Human Trafficking, Random Facts
Slavery Today, End Slavery Now