A Stolen Life

There is a problem that is getting bigger.   It is one that willing governments are trying to fight, but it is one that will take changes in our thinking, in our attitudes, in our hearts for anything effective to happen.   It is a problem where the perpetrators are often dealt laughable sentences and victims are treated as criminals instead of as moms, sisters, sons, and daughters of families who were destroyed because of what has happened to them.   The “It’s not happening to me or affecting my life” way of thinking needs to change.  

    Picture yourself for a moment as a young teenager.   You live in a poverty-stricken neighborhood in a city that law and order seem to come only to make an appearance.   It is easy to wake up early to walk to work since you have been doing it for several years.   What makes you uneasy is having to walk to and from work under moonlight.   While you make your way to the only source of income for your family, you try to budget what your family needs to survive on less money than what you will earn.   It may be hard going to work cleaning the trash bins at a local restaurant; but it would be harder going home each night not knowing how you are going to feed your little brothers and sisters.   Today, like several others, you wait to cross the highway.   A man that you have passed before says … “Hey there.   I know someone that can get you a job where you can make tons of money to send back to your family.   Come with me, I’ll introduce you and he will help you out.”   You are unsure and know you probably cannot trust his claim for tons of money, but the promise of possibilities for your family is too much to not follow him.  

    In a matter of minutes someone’s young life can be turned upside down and their identities wiped from the face of the earth, just as if they had never existed.   Every year millions of men, women, and children are exploited and sold into many forms of slavery; there is not one country that is immune to human...