Today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day--January 11, 2012
Abolition: the act or process of abolishing or being abolished.
Abolitionist: one who favors the abolition of a practice or institution, esp. of capital punishment or
slavery.
Slave: a person who is the legal property of another or others and is bound to absolute obedience; a human chattel. A drudge; a person working very hard. A helpless victim of some dominating influence.
Slavery, bondage, captivity, servitude, imprisonment, confinement, duress, oppression, repression, subjugation, domination, yoke, restraint, fetters, shackles, chains, bonds, irons.
Definitions from Oxford Pocket American Dictionary of Current English
and The Synonym Finder J. I. Rodale
UNICEF "reports that across the world, there are over one million children entering the sex trade every year and that approximately 30 million children have lost their childhood through sexual exploitation over the past 30 years." Quote from Lisa L. Thompson's testimony, for further reading read link below for Human Trafficking.
See also link for UNICEF further figures:
http://www.unicef.org/indonesia/Factsheet_CSEC_trafficking_Indonesia.pdf
Links for more information:
http://www.humantrafficking.org/events/64
There are four available downloads of testimonies. I downloaded, printed, and read Lisa L. Thompson's testimony.
http://breakingchains.ning.com/
"Fight for the freedom of innocent children who have been subjected to
the chains of bondage through prostitution, abuse, and trafficking." From Breaking Chains Website
http://notinmytown.net/
Published by
New Hope Publishers 2011
320 pages
Christian Fiction
Link @ Christian Book:
http://www.christianbook.com/deliver-me-from-evil-freedom/kathi-macias/9781596693067/pd/693067?product_redirect=1&Ntt=693067&item_code=&Ntk=keywords&event=ESRCP
Paperback $10.99
Author links:
http://kathimacias.com/
http://www.christianspeakersservices.com/kathi-macias---christian-speaker--author.html
http://kathieasywritermacias.blogspot.com/
Kathi Macias has written a brave, sobering, frightening story of child sex trafficking in America.
It is rare for me to read a book and feel so uncomfortable that I had a hard time keeping my seat. I often had to take a break and walk around the room, or house, or even leave my house in order to digest what I'd just read. This is a book that when the reader finishes the last page there can no longer be naivety or apathy; but instead propelled, to be an abolisher, and an abolitionist, and an advocate, for the safety of children!
Mara is a teenage girl living in the San Diego, California area. Mara was born in Mexico, and when she was a young girl her father sold her to be a slave in the sex trade. Mara, her name means bitter. A name that reflects her life. She only speaks when she is told to do so, her head is bowed in submission, she is only fed if she is obedient, her clothing is provocative, she sleeps when she is told she can. She has no freedom, her every move has limitations. She is a prisoner in a world where people use and abuse her body. They do not care if she lives another day except that they would loose out on making money off her body.
Chanthra a teenage girl lives in the Golden Triangle region of Thailand. She had been raised in a Christian home, but went to live with people who had promised her parents they'd care for her. Instead Chanthra is forced to be in the sex trade. Her owner gives her drugs to dull her painful life. She works a shift, sleeps, abuses drugs, works a shift, sleeps, abuses drugs. Her life is a horrific imprisonment.
Jonathon is a senior in high school. He lives in San Diego, California with his family. He will be going to Bible College in the fall. He knows it will make his parents happy if he goes to Bible College, yet he is unmotivated and unfocused on his life beyond baseball. In a chance encounter the world he thought he knew would be shaken and he would never be the same again.
This is a book I'll never forget. It was emotionally difficult for me to read what these young girls endured, yet awareness is the first step in stopping this horrifying reality.
Kathy has written several books with themes that bring to light and break barriers against culture, prejudice, and abuse. She writes on themes that many people not only won't talk about, but they don't believe are really happening.
Mara and Chanthra were forced in to an enslaved existence. Each moment that ticks slowly by is with the foremost thought of survival. Kathy Macias has written so realistically of their suffrage and pain that my skin prickles.
The slave owner's conversations, actions, and persona is written candidly. Their putridness nearly trickled out of the pages of the book.
Weaved in to this story is a common theme in Kathi's books, the power of prayer. The Holy Spirit's prompting in Christian's to pray for others, including other people we have never met or known.
This must have been a difficult book to give birth to. In writing it Kathi must have felt exhausted at times.
Book Two in the Freedom Series is Special Delivery--available early March.
http://www.amazon.com/Special-Delivery-Freedom-Kathi-Macias/dp/159669307X/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1326283834&sr=8-9
This posted review will also appear on my blog @
A Well-Watered Garden.
Blissful Reading!
Annette
