March 25, 2016
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Trafficking, and Obfuscation
March 24, 2016, Prescott- I watched an episode of a network television show, on my laptop, this evening. It dealt with the abuse of teenaged girls by a sex-trafficking ring. The piece was outlandish, on the surface, having, as its antagonists, two powerful members of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in New York. The piece was fictitious, yet showed how diligent police work, and an appeal to the humanity of a low-level operative in the ring, gave up the culprits.
It was no surprise, though, that during the early stages of the investigation, the ringleaders turned to obfuscation, to role reversal, and smoke-screening, in their attempts to get out from under the encroaching detectives. This is a common modus operandi of wrongdoers with means.
This stays in my mind, because yesterday I read an article in the Global Post, an online news magazine I have trusted for several years. The article takes issue with widespread concern over sex trafficking, specifically in the country of Cambodia. The author quotes an “expert”, who has “lived with the sex workers” in that country, as saying that a Cambodian woman who enlisted the aid of U.S. journalist Nicholas Kristoff, in shining a light on the problem of sex trafficking in her country, was exaggerating, had falsified and embellished her reports, and that making human trafficking a cause celebre was, in the case of Cambodia at least, a misrepresentation of the facts.
This is what the powerful do, when their activities, and the income they derive from those, are threatened: Obfuscate, discredit and go back to business as usual. Maybe there are plenty of women who choose a life of compensated sexual promiscuity, whether out of economic despair or the sense that this is the only way that they will ever know physical intimacy with a man. They, however despondent their lot, are not the primary focus of those who have taken up the cause of bringing an end to human trafficking.
The shameful attempt by Global Post to becloud this whole matter will never stop those of us who are committed to ending the imprisonment and torture, to which thousands of women and children are subjected, world-wide, day by excruciating day. I urge each person reading this to stand up to those beguiled by their own perceived power and authority, and work to free those, in every nation on Earth, who are held in virtual slavery.
Comments (2)
I saw that same episode and was struck by the negativity - no one church or religion is perfect and all members are flawed humans. This show juxtaposed with the reports of human trafficking of the multitudes of displaced and fleeing people from the unrest in the middle east has disturbed my rest and troubled my soul. I worry that people have become so inured to the wrongs that they turn a blind eye.
@murisopsis: Despite it all (and combat the wrongs, we must), I feel very strongly that the ending of all this will actually be much better, far more glorious, than can be envisioned at present.