Scarier than Any Halloween Movie: Nefarious

Scarier than Friday the 13th, The Exorcist, Halloween, Night of the Living Dead, etc.

Scarier than ANY Halloween movie. Ever.

What is?

Nefarious: Merchant of Souls.

It is a documentary I saw recently and the reason it is SO scary is because it isn't Hollywood.

It. Is. Real. Life.

It is an incredibly well-made documentary detailing the selling of souls. Not objects but people.

People (mostly women) who are raped multiple times a day by lots of different men.
Often trapped in the same tiny room that is basically a prison.
Treated worse than a dog.
Dehumanized.
Violated.
Sold.
Broken - body, spirit, soul.
------------
And then it happens the next day.
And the next.
And the next.
With NO END in sight.

And again, this movie isn't a made up Hollywood Horror.

It is real life for millions of people.

27 million people, in fact, who are bought and sold in modern day slavery.

Like Ordering a Pizza or Buying a Beer

In the movie, one man compared the process of purchasing women to the process of ordering a pizza. Do you want mushroom or pepperoni? The blonde or the brunette?

Oh. My. Word.

I wanted to spit in his face. People around me were sniffling and crying but I had a simmering anger stirring inside of me.

Another man in Asia owned 2,400 girls. He sold them in clubs where a beer cost $4, grapes cost $5 and for ONE HOUR, a little girl cost $3. Little girls who grow up with the horrible false reality that they can be bought for a price and a price less than a beer!?! Little girls who grow up with no sense of self-worth and no hope and no dreams of a future. Little girls who are away from family. Little girls who are sold into the slave trade by their family!?!

Cable or Your Kid

The movie described a "culture of complicity" where families see their daughters as a blessing, not because they get to love them as they raise them into a cherished young woman. Instead, daughters are blessings because they are seen as a security asset to sell if they needed more money. Frighteningly, this process of parents prostituting their daughters in human trafficking has become so common that many of them sell their daughters not because they have to but because the money their daughters can make allows for families to have luxuries like television and alcohol. Yep, keep you kid or have access to cable tv.

Moving Mannequins

Another disgusting and heart-wrenching image was in Amsterdam where prostitution is legal. Women were standing in windows displaying themselves for purchase. They looked like the mannequins in a Victoria's Secret window, only they moved. And they had faces and hearts and souls. 

And in the rooms where they worked, there was a built-in "panic button" in case their customer tried to injure or kill them. 

The website lists this fact: Up to 96% of women in prostitution want to escape but feel that they can't.  

That is not Hollywood horror; it is real life.

Other Fast Facts from the Website

• A child is trafficked every 30 seconds. – UNICEF
• Human Trafficking occurs in 161 out of 192 countries. – The United Nations
• In some countries it is estimated that 70% of men purchase sex. – Victor Malarek; The Johns
• Over 27 million people are enslaved around the world. This is more than double the number of Africans enslaved during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. – Kevin Bales; Free the Slaves

Scary, is it not? 

I could go on for pages and pages detailing the frightening facts and insights this movie provides on the real life horror of human trafficking. Instead, I encourage you to simply watch the film yourself. 

It has won over 21 film festival honors. 

You can buy the film or host a screening. 

And then find out how you can take action because again, this film is not a made up Halloween Hollywood Horror but it is real life. 

Southern Belle Feminist Takin' the Capitol.... tryin' out politics

On Tuesday, February 24th, I headed to the capitol... of South Carolina to shake things up.

It was a start.

And so empowering.

About 50 of us - mostly women  but a few guys as well - showed up bright and early at the State House to lobby against human trafficking.

You may remember my post explaining when Passion put it on my heart. But I didn't just want my heart to be heavy and sink - along with the urgency I felt to "do something now" as they had encouraged all of us in attendance while we were in Atlanta.

Fortunately, this perfect opportunity to maintain the pull on my heart and my urgency for action presented itself through some email correspondence with a former professor of mine. She welcomed me and another friend from Passion to tag along with her to lobby in Columbia.

I was slightly intimidated because I had never done this before.

But, ANYONE can do it.

Polaris project was there to give us a bit of training but most of it was simply us - strength in numbers - just going and sharing our thoughts with our congress people.

Some striking things the Polaris organizers and some SC lawyers shared with us were:

• People - especially in South Carolina - seem to think that slavery is a thing of the past when everyone lived in plantations. False. It is alive and flourishing today with more slaves on the planet RIGHT now than in ALL of human history. 
• South Carolina is a particularly ideal area for traffickers because we have so many highways, water access points AND (something I'd never thought of) privately owned planes and boats that utilized by traffickers because they are not as regulated as larger vessels where most authorities assume people are smuggled. 
• People tend to think this is just a problem for foreigners who just happen to be in our country. Ok. A) So what. They are still people and deserve to be fought for... this is a humanity issue, not an American or Indian or Thailand or (insert any country's name here) issue. And, B) This problem is affecting Americans. Polaris estimates that as many as (and probably more than) 100,000 native-born children are trafficked within our borders and most between the ages of 11 and 14. Vulnerable children on the streets or in broken homes and sometimes from just next door in a white, wealthy, suburban home. 

A poster we had that day

 

After sharing with our congressmen or their staff  in their offices as well as anyone looking important that we passed in the statehouse/elevator/outside/etc. (which I promise we tried to do in the least annoying way possible but some things are worth nagging over!), we headed to a press conference.

After that, we simply sat on the steps of the State House reading victims' stories. It was so powerful.

And we were all given a piece of purple duct tape to wear on our wrist as a visible reminder and a conversation starter for people held in "chains" whether metal or manipulation. However, one woman made quite a statement by walking around the grounds wearing a piece of that duct tape over her mouth, representing the silence of the victims that go unnoticed by so many of us.

The most exciting thing?

Before we left that afternoon, we heard that the bill (H3757) which had been basically stagnant since it was introduced almost a year previously, was pushed through the house and onto the senate floor!?!

Our voice was heard.
The victim's stories, names, and pain were heard.
Action was taken.
Change was made.

Now the fight is by no means over. However, SC was previously in the bottom 9 of the states to have legislation on this issue and if this is fully voted in, we will be one of the most comprehensive states in the nation.

So now we've got to raise our voices and the victims' voices to the nation.
Join me.
To raise YOUR voice, reach out to your own congressperson: http://www.fyi.legis.state.us/

And, maybe I'll head to THE capital next... Anyone wanna join me in DC?

Pretty legit with all the flags and everything right??? There was an open podium so we tried it out ;)

Help end human trafficking.