Essentially human trafficking is the exploitation of the vulnerable by the powerful for financial gain, and while sexual exploitation is often what springs to mind when we think of human trafficking, it is by no means the full picture. Other forms of trafficking include forced labor, criminal exploitation, domestic servitude and even organ harvesting. Victims include women, children and men from every nation in the world. Human trafficking is truly shocking in both its nature and its scale and, while ignorance is blissful, once our eyes have been opened inaction is NOT an option for the follower of Jesus.

Human Trafficking. I knew about it, or at least I thought I did. Certainly I knew that all over the world evil people do all kinds of vile things for profit and perverted pleasure. But in truth I had no real idea as to the true scale of it’s horror, or indeed its proximity. That was until I heard about Eva (not her real name).

Eva lived in Lithuania with her husband and children. They were happy, but they were poor. Desperate for money Eva responded to an advertisement offering work as a maid in a London hotel. To her joy she got the job. As she boarded the plane she was sad that she was going to be parted from her family, but she focussed on the money that she would soon be sending home to them.

Only that’s not how it worked out.

Upon landing in London Eva was met by a man who took her to a private location where her passport was taken from her and she was raped. In the week that followed she was sold as a prostitute and raped by over 40 men. The following weekend Eva was taken along with a group of other women to a house where a sex party was taking place. She pleaded with the other women to help her escape, but they seemed resigned to their plight. So trembling and terrified Eva climbed out of a bathroom window and fled through the streets. Mercifully she was discovered by the local police who took care of her, placed her in a safe house and ultimately got her home to her family.

There is much that shocked me about this story, but perhaps the most shocking part is where she was rescued from. The house where she was being held captive was Blackwood, a rural backwater just miles from my home. In the space of a week Eva had been trafficked from Lithuania to the South Wales Valleys. She had been exploited, humiliated and suffered horrific abuse.

This real-life story (relayed to me by the detective who handled her case) literally wrecked me! Indeed it propelled me onto a gut-wrenching, faith-stretching journey of discovery. It is a journey that, as I have been confronted by the brutal realities of human trafficking, has been marked by raw tears and holy fury.

• How can we not be moved when we discover that more than 45 MILLION people live as slaves today? (The number rises each year!)
• How can it not blow our minds that human trafficking is a criminal industry that now generates upwards of $150 BILLION annually?
• How could our hearts not be crushed when we learn that it in some countries it is cheaper to buy sex with a child than it is to purchase a bottle of beer?.

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