Exodus Cry - The Prayer Movement to End Slavery

The holidays hold an array of memories and emotion for the women in restoration with Exodus Cry. For some, the Christmas season is associated with the acute pain of neglect or violence. While for others it was the only time of year where some vestige of positive memory can be traced.

A sense of home and belonging is immensely important on Christmas. The deepest wounds surrounding this season are connected to family relationships and abuses. Therefore, the greatest healing comes through God’s covenantal love and spirit of adoption made flesh through earthly families receiving His daughters as their own. To be joyously accepted by a Godly family, given an identity as cherished daughter, valued and enjoyed for one’s unique personhood, and shown unconditional love is a wonder that works miracles for all of us – especially for those who have never experienced this accurate reflection of the Father’s heart.

At the heart of Christmas is celebrating Immanuel – God With Us. Surely Jesus is, has been, and will be with each one who has suffered the anguish of a broken family. Jesus put on flesh and came into a natural family as a vulnerable baby. He experienced our pains and our joys. He lived a sinless life and took the full extent of sin for all time upon Himself that we may be brought into His family forever. What a glorious value statement and promise from God on being with us and on becoming part of a whole family with Him.

During these next weeks, please keep our girls in prayer specifically through the following requests.

• May they experience God’s shalom and joy deep in their hearts, knowing they are beloved daughters.
• Pray that the Lord brings redemption on this season and opportunity for new memories during the holidays.
• May our girls be surrounded by covenantal friends and spiritual family members who overflow with unconditional love and support.
• Pray for God to raise up more families who would open their hearts and homes to adopt, both in the spiritual and the natural.

It was only after the Taliban, the reigning clan of Islamic warlords that had terrorized Afghanistan since 1996, fell in 2001 that the stories of their most brutal oppression came to light. While the Taliban had tasked the terrorist organization al-Qaeda with developing its military defense, the real war it was waging had been concealed: a war on women.

In one sense, sex trafficking everywhere is classifiably a “war on women.” To the uninitiated, the UN’s definition of human trafficking may seem cumbersome, a laundry list of qualifications and contingencies. Why not just say “slavery”? A global survey of the many faces of human trafficking, and sex trafficking in particular, demonstrates that the modern face of slavery is anything but monolithic, and a wide net must be cast in order to rightly include every possible victimization, every front of this war of abuse and degradation. One prominent haven of such degradation, the Afghan capital of Kabul, demonstrates a nuance not found in any other region of the earth.

Since Afghanistan is largely broken up into Islamic fiefdoms, the control of the capital has major influence on the culture of the country. Ousting the Taliban and driving them into Pakistan meant that room could finally be made for a top-down democracy that upheld the rights of the poor and oppressed. Part of the reason the conflict has lasted more than ten years (and counting) is that a premature withdrawal of allied forces would leave a vacuum of power that could easily be filled again by Taliban violence. Most of the world might not care or even notice, but the world never has been quick to heed the abuse of its most vulnerable people groups. If women are to find refuge anywhere in Afghanistan, Kabul must maintain a democratic concern for the weak and marginalized; in short, for women and children.

Human trafficking in Afghanistan, a traditional Islamic culture, is not the egregious deception of false job offers in Chisinau; nor is it the generational poverty of Mumbai; nor the chronic fatherlessness of New York City or the outright collapse of a country at war, as was the case in Juba, Sudan. Though Afghanistan may share similarities with any or all of those, its chief problem is a comprehensive cultural subjugation of women to the rule of men, an abuse in and of itself, but one that leads to even greater abuses.

One of the most striking features of human trafficking in Afghanistan is the overwhelming number of child brides. According to a study by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), over 80 percent of trafficking victims were underage brides, and half of that group were married off by the age of 15 or younger.

Poverty plays a key role in the giving of child brides. Wealthy older men may offer a handsome “bride-sum” for a young girl, and her father, once he has “married her off,” then has one less mouth to feed. In 2005, a video was released to the AIHRC that showed a thirteen-year-old bride, who had escaped from her forced marriage after refusing to consummate it with her new husband, receiving forty lashes upon being returned to the man by the authorities. Both underage marriages and beatings are illegal in Afghanistan, but that made little difference in a country governed largely by provincial warlords.

Unfortunately, Western forces that are supposedly trying to liberate the country often become part of the problem. If there is a sad but common refrain of military personnel taking advantage of those they profess to protect, that trend has only been further accentuated by the advent of privatized military security forces. These “mercenaries” are even more out of sight and out of mind of government scrutiny and, as a result, have been making headline news for nearly ten years for abuses and alleged war crimes. One of the more flagrant violations in Kabul came from a non-government paramilitary group contracted out by the US State Department to provide security for the US Embassy in Kabul, ArmorGroup North America.

In 2009, a suit was filed against ArmorGroup related to the frequenting of brothels known to house victims of human trafficking by members of ArmorGroup. Buying sex from women known to have been trafficked is a clear violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. At one point during the development of corrective actions, a process that unfolded over several years, an ArmorGroup trainee was alleged to have been reported for bragging about the human trafficking operations there, and boasting of the “opportunity” to actually purchase a woman for $20,000 and begin making a profit himself. No serious repercussions were faced by any member of ArmorGroup, even though copious evidence was produced; but make no mistake, deviant sexual practices are not new to the warlord culture of Afghanistan.

One of the more disturbing trends of effete Afghani warlords is actually making a resurgence—the practice of Bacha Bazi. Bacha Bazi, literally “playing with children,” is the practice of dressing underage boys in women’s clothing to dance for private parties of wealthy and influential Afghani men. While the practice is thought to be dead, outlawed by Islamic law, and publicly decried by authorities, it nonetheless persists. At the end of the night of dancing, the boy is generally sold for sex to the highest bidder. If this concept presses the credulity of the reader, videos of the scene—a roomful of men utterly transfixed by a twelve-year-old boy, dressed in flowing silk and jewelry, leaping and twirling—do nothing to aid comprehension.

The only thing more devastating is the allegations that another privatized military group, DynCorp, has been involved in the selling and transporting of Bacha Bazi. This only serves to underscore that while a democratic government is needed to protect liberties, even those forces that are being used to establish such freedoms are as sinful as the culture they look to replace. Submission to Christ is the only path to liberation.

Prayer Points:

Pray for the establishment of a righteous government in Kabul that will champion the case of the poor, marginalized, and oppressed (women and children).

Pray for privatized military groups to be exposed if they are truly taking advantage of the people they seek to serve.

Pray for a revival in Kabul that will usher Afghanistan into an age of freedom: political freedom, gender freedom, and spiritual freedom—from sin and all of its consequences.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ06Df03.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112728404

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,4565c22544,4565c25f551,4e301baa2,0.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/world/asia/31flogging.html?pagewanted=all

http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Full_report_156.pdf

http://www.humanrights.asia/opinions/columns/AHRC-ETC-035-2011

“Seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” – Isaiah 1:17

Working in the anti-trafficking field, I am confronted with stories of execrable sexual abuse almost daily. I have found oppression to take many forms: emotional or psychological manipulation, physical bondage, verbal abuse, or even sexual exploitation and, worse, enslavement. Considering all the disturbing elements of these cases, one of the most prevalent is the absence of an advocate. Time after time, no one was willing to stand up against the exploitation of a little girl or boy.

Oppressors can be found in every walk of life. They range from priests of the cloth to human traffickers in Russia, and often, they are veiled behind a cloak of respectability. In most cases when one of these individuals is finally exposed, there is a track record of people who were aware of their abusive behavior and yet did nothing to stop it. My heart breaks when I consider how many of these atrocities could have been averted through the simple actions of an advocate—an intercessor.

In the book of Isaiah (chapter 59), we hear God’s revealing response to the injustices permeating Israel’s society. He “wondered” that there was no intercessor. “Wondered” can also be translated as “stupefied” or “appalled” and is only used twice in Scripture (Isa. 59:16 and Isa. 63:5)—both times to describe God’s shock that there was no one to bring justice, no one to stand up for the oppressed. Piercing through the cloud of Israel’s outward piety, God identifies the core of the nation’s malignant condition—social inaction.

Today many people consider the pursuit of social justice as an addition to their faith. But God considers it evidence of our faith (Jas. 2:20). As the Church, we are called to embody the heart of Jesus on behalf of the oppressed. “Pure and undefiled religion before God . . . is to visit orphans and widows in their trouble” (Jas. 1:27).

If we are to express God’s heart to those who are oppressed we must be aware of every aspect of this calling. We are not only to care for the oppressed, but to literally stand against their oppressors and “rebuke them.” God exhorts us to “REBUKE the oppressor” (emphasis added).

Too often we mistake silence as mercy. It is not. Silence and inaction provide the perfect atmosphere for injustice to permeate our churches, schools, workplaces, and homes. The apostle Paul charges us to “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them” (Eph. 5:11, emphasis added).

If we are to walk out the biblical mandate to pursue justice we will inevitably take a radical and assertive stand against those who seek to oppress others. Messengers of justice do not tolerate or coddle the oppressor. We do not make excuses for them or rationalize their behavior. Oppressors are not to be psychoanalyzed. They are to be stopped.

Our morally relativistic culture is painfully deficient of accountability, forming the seedbed from which oppressors are arising, en masse, many times without the conviction that there is anything wrong with the acts of injustice they perpetrate. Once they have reached the point where they can justify their oppression, their conscience is seared. Delivering an incisive rebuke will be as much for them as it is for the vulnerable ones they seek to exploit. The light of truth has the power to awaken any individual from his cave of delusion.

Oppressors must be confronted with the essential truth that all human life is sacred and inconceivably precious in the eyes of God. They must be admonished that they are destroying a person whose life is made in the very image of God and created for an eternal purpose. To rob a person of this divine right is to rob God Himself.

There can be no confusion regarding the judgment that awaits those who oppress other human beings. To the oppressed, God says, “Be strong, do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God; He will come and save you” (Isa. 35:4). But to the oppressor, God says “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea” (Mk. 9:42). In other words: What I will do to you is far worse than any retribution you could possibly face at the hands of the most ruthless person. It truly is a “fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). Those who oppress and exploit others have nothing to look forward to but the fiery judgment of God’s eternal wrath.

An Open Letter to Oppressors and Perpetrators of Suffering and Injustice

What you are engaged in is a violation of human life. You are causing severe, possibly irreparable, damage to the person you oppress. Through your heinous actions you have destroyed their spirit, their soul, and their body, robbing them of the freedom, sanctity, and dignity their Creator endowed them with.

I feel compelled to warn you that though I have many ideas of how to punish you, none can compare with the judgment God Himself has prepared for you if you persist in your oppression of others. Incredibly, you have a marvelous and almost unbelievable opportunity to surrender to God, to repent of and turn from your oppressive actions, and to receive Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who bore the wrath of God for all who turn from their wicked ways and accept and follow Him. For it is only through the cross of Christ that a just God is able to forgive sin without denying justice.

However, should you choose to continue in your current path, make no mistake, you will surely die and bear the full weight of God’s wrath, for He is righteous and just. And in your eternally reprobate condition you will suffer incomprehensible torment for the ages to come, without end. On the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men (2 Pet. 3:7), when “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10), these very words will testify against you, and you will know for all eternity that your path of destruction was avoidable and that you alone are to blame for the judgment you bear.

Therefore, I pray for you, as Jesus instructed us to pray for our enemies. But I don’t pray that God would overlook your despicable actions. Rather, I pray, with trembling in my heart, that God, in His kindness, would lead you to repentance (Rom. 2:4), and that you would come to your senses before you stand face to face with the eternal Father of all those you defiled through your self-centered lust for power. He is the God who said, “For jealousy is a husband’s fury; therefore He will not spare in the day of vengeance” (Prov. 6:34). “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Gal. 6:7). I can only fathom what the bowels of hell hold in expectation for you, should you refuse God’s offer of mercy (see Isa. 14:9). But if you turn from your life of sin and oppression and call upon the living God, He will make you a new creation and give you His peace, for you were “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24).

If your heart is stirred to turn away from your oppression and accept God’s free invitation of forgiveness and you would like to receive further prayer and counseling, please email us at: info@exoduscry.com.

When did Bombay change its name? In 1995, actually––it was a change meant to reflect India’s roots in Hinduism, and shed one of the last vestiges of British imperial reign. Mumbai is in many important ways a modern city, though with centuries of heritage. Mumbai is a city that forces you to bring into focus a different version of India, to realize that India can no longer be relegated to a place of pity. This is no longer the India of Rudyard Kipling. This isn’t even the India of Mother Theresa any more. And it was arguably never the India of Slumdog Millionaire. India is home to more than a few billionaires, not surprising for a country that jumped 51% in the number of millionaires in 2008 when the rest of the world was in a recession. It is a land of giants, and Mumbai is one of its capitals.

Mumbai is the fourth largest city in the world, a major industrial hub in one of the worlds fastest developing BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China). In these rapidly expanding economies, business––commerce, industry, technology, education––is booming. With each new high rise that cuts into the Mumbai skyline, labors by the drones are drawn to this city. Migrant workers provide a steady stream of labor––and sex buyers

Forming the western edge of the bay at the mouth of the Ulhas River is Kamathipura, a district whose name means “work” and which is famous for a particular kind of work: Kamathipura, Mumbai’s redlight district, happens to be the largest red-light district in the world. Kamathipura, a unified cluster of islands on the southern tip of Mumbai has been called India’s “HIV timebomb.” Since prostitution is illegal in India, brothels are owned and run by mobsters. HIV screening is nonexistent, and mixed with a largely uneducated clientele who do not make the connection between condoms and transmission of STDs, Kamathipura is an epidemic waiting to happen.

Poverty is the problem here, generations deep. Women raise their daughters in the brothels, owned by madams and pimps before they even come of age to be sold (somewhere between 11 and 13). Other girls were abducted outright, or sold for a pittance by their parents. What they don’t know is that, if their lives turn out like the thousands of others whose lives began as theirs, they will one day get used to servicing a long list of clients that will gradually get shorter as theirs lives get longer; they will get used to the beatings, the pregnancies, the abortions, the births, and (eventually) getting very, very sick. They will likely become so complicit with their own condition that they will one day lure, seduce, and coerce other girls into this horrendous lifestyle.

But none of that makes this a choice. When a women is reduced to a sexual object against her will day in and day out thousands of times over, when she one day ceases to hope that she will ever be anything more, and when every one of her dreams is effaced beyond recognition and she becomes only a fixture in the tableau of the “largest red light district in the world,” this is by no means free will. Slavery breaks the slave.

There is no such thing as a rescue for a problem of this magnitude. What is called for here is a massive, sustained, and prolonged labor on behalf of the church to shift the entire tide of a culture.

Jesus said, “Lift up your eyes and see; the fields are already white for the harvest.” What we learn in Kamathipura is that a ripe harvest looks like broken humanity. Laws may change, and democratic freedoms may come, but it is not likely that either of those enacted would bring to bear any real change for the impoverished thousands of woman and girls being sold for sex here.

This is how you an pray for Mumbai, India:

1. Pray for laborers to be sent into the harvest of broken souls living in Karathipura, and being sold daily.

2. Pray for the church to be emboldened with light and truth to serve the least of these.

3. Pray for righteousness to be exalted in Mumbai through just laws and police forces.

Sub-Saharan Africa is a point of concern for many world leaders. Genocide, civil war, disease, and rampant poverty have overwhelmed many of these countries. Even by the measure of these problem-stricken states, Zimbabwestands out as a grave case.

A “paint-by-numbers” portrait of Zimbabwe is grim. According to the CIA World Factbook, Zimbabwe ranks 159 out of 220 countries in terms of their gross domestic product. At a paltry $500 per person per year, it ranks nearly last in GDP per capita. Conversely, Zimbabwe ranks first among world nations for public debt, with a 234 percent deficit of their GDP, and an unemployment rate of 95 percent. Consequently, in a population of nearly 12 million people, almost nobody can find work. This is not a picture of a country falling down, but a picture of a country lying dead in the street.

At the street level, it’s impossible to miss the one alternative that always presents itself when a collapsed economy limits job opportunities: prostitution. Women of all ages (including scores only 12 or 13 years old) from all social strata, including professionals and college students, find themselves succumbing to the sex trade. For many teen girls growing up in poverty-stricken townships around the nation’s capital, coming of age includes a “haj” to Harare, the major metropolitan center. While they tell themselves and one another that they will find jobs in the service industry as maids or waitresses, too many end up dancing in dilapidated night clubs, competing for an anemic male patronage which comes to buy ten-dollar sex.

The fate of women swept into the sex trade in Harare serves to underscore a reoccurring theme: when men fall, women fall prey. In one instance, a homeless teenage girl resorted to prostitution after her father’s livelihood disappeared in the chaotic land-redistribution of 2000 and he died of malaria. Another found no recourse but to sell her body after she was left homeless, along with 700,000 others, from the 2005 urban rationalization program, ironically named Operation Restore Order. A mother of two can find no other way to pay bills when her husband leaves for Herbert Chitepo Avenue, a prostitution hub for upscale buyers,includinggovernment officials and celebrities. A married mother of four might resort to selling her body to put food on the table—sometimes without her husband’s knowledge, and sometimes with.

Hardly any woman in Harare is immune from the steep slide of poverty into a lifestyle of prostitution. Recent crackdowns on curfews—women are not permitted on the streets of Harare after 8:00pm—aimed at reducing the number of females out at night and hence eliminating prostitution, have terrorized even non-prostituted women. However, a growing trend finds its way around even the curfews: many road-side lodges harbor an underground prostitution industry. The opportunity is obvious: widespread poverty means many roadside lodges sit vacant, and prostituted women are always in need of temporary lodging to conduct “business.”  Prostitution becomes a win-win enterprise—not only for the lodge owners, but for a network of ailing industries.Thus, they enjoy shelter from violent crackdowns, a makeshift security system of police and security guards, and profit from a steady stream of sex-buyers whose taxis clog the parking lots. In difficult financial times, everyone looks for a kick-back: from landlords, corrupt cops, and security guards, to drivers. What emerges is a complicated symbiosis of industries, all profiting from the sale of a woman’s body, and all demanding a cut of her meager wages—adding insult to injury, and heaping humiliation upon exploitation.

When economies collapse, the unavoidable byproduct is that the girls and women of a nation resort to the world’s “oldest profession.” This trend is only possible when men, who are meant to be pillars of communities and whose strength is never needed more than in such dire times, decide instead to demand en masse that their desire for sex be fulfilled. When men fall, women fall prey. But to what? Poverty? Temptation? Victimization? No—to men.

Prayer Points

1. Pray for a revival in Herbert Chitepo Avenue that would dry up the demand for paid sex.
2. Pray for light and truth to wash over Harare, and that government leaders would arrive at wise solutions to the complicated sources and chains of poverty.
3. Pray for the leaders of Zimababwe, that they would be empowered to restore rule of law and sound financial practices, and that “righteousness would exalt” the entire nation.
4. Pray for a revival in the church in Harare. As in most places, prostituted women report that their clientele includes Christian ministers and musicians.
5. Pray that the church in Harare would take its rightful place as a prophetic community of holiness and justice that boldly proclaims Jesus.

Benjamin Nolot was recently interviewed by Randy Bohlender on The Spirit of Adoption radio show. The full episode is below.

Modern-day Seoul is no different than many other thriving cities in developing nations across Southeast Asia. Peppered throughout the city’s seedier areas are a conspicuously large number of barber shops, nondescript cafes, and massage parlors, all of which are fronts for prostitution. These are the typical work arounds seen in every nation where the flesh trade is prohibited by law, yet permitted by lawmakers and authorities. After all, the sex trade in Korea is estimated at 14 trillion South Korean Won, a whopping 1.6% of the total GDP of the nation. But a prostitution industry of this magnitude doesn’t just spring up overnight. Or does it?

In 1950, Communist North Korea invaded it’s democratic southern neighbor. When an armistice was finally reached, all that separated South Korea from a future invasion was a demilitarized zone spanning the width of the Korean peninsula and a formidable western military presence. Springing up around military bases, “camptowns” became centers of R & R for allied soldiers as well as an opportunity for impoverished Koreans to improve their economic standing. But this turned to be an opportunity for slave traders to gain at the expense of the daughters of an entire nation.

South Korea had a vested interest in keeping an American military presence in the country, both for protection, but also because GI’s were an economic boon. They were indigenous tourists, a revenue stream that after a day staring down hostile forces across a barbed wire fence just wanted to blow off some steam. Behind the closed doors in the meetings of diplomats, Korean officials promised US officials that Korean women would be encouraged to meet the “natural needs” of american GI’s. Part of international relations between South Korea and America became ensuring that GI’s stationed in cities like Seoul had a steady stream of prostituted women who were regularly screened for venereal diseases and then licensed to sell their bodies. Never mind that the women were often lured and deceived by brothel owners into the trade, and sexually brutalized as an initiation. Or forget that they were forced to continue to prostitute themselves through debt-bondage, a system of exaggerated and often fictitious costs for room, board, and loans for medicine that prostituted women had to pay back to their pimps by having sex with customers. These “working women” were the true patriots of a nation, ensuring the continued good will of a nation far superior economically than they.

Whereas in the 60’s and 70’s, prostitution was an accepted part of the military life, by the 90’s, a growing consciousness of the plight of the women in camptowns began to emerge as an injustice that contradicted the very effort to secure freedom and liberty in Korea. “If U.S. soldiers are patrolling or frequenting these establishments, the military is in effect helping to line the pockets of human traffickers,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was told explicitly from his aids in 2002. Not long after, in 2004, Korea cracked down on prostitution, outlawing the practice and shutting down all brothels.

Despite the major reforms, though, not much is different today from the 60’s except perhaps the color of the women: Philippine women, along with Russian and Japanese, fill the barber shops and massage parlors all offering “special services,” which are in this day and age glaring evidences of international human trafficking.

In Spring of 2011, the most recent shut-down of the red light districts occurred in Seoul. This close held fast for a few weeks, yet soon the businesses were again in full-swing. Despite government efforts to stem the tide of illicit activity by placing police officers and squad cars in these districts, the trade continues. Although unwittingly tolerant of this matter, it seems that Seoul’s government is just waiting for the permission to move further with the criminalization of purchasing a woman for sex. These illegal institutes are the very grounds where foreign women are trafficked and enslaved, and unless prostitution and trafficking begin to be seen as intrinsic of one another, progress to end trafficking in Seoul seems far fetched.

We live in a world where prostitution is a glue that helps to hold alliances together, and where women’s bodies are the insinuated bargaining chips of international relations. Developing countries in a very literal sense must promise stronger nations in exchange for their help and protection, “our daughters will put out for your sons if your sons will fight for our homeland.”

But the daughters themselves have never made such an agreement. And that’s why this is slavery.

• Pray for the South Korean government to criminalize prostitution and take a stand for the sanctity of human life.

• Pray for another crack down on prostitution venues that shelter human trafficking victims.

• Pray that the church in South Korea would not ignore this issue, but begin to pray for these women and stand for true justice.

Sources:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,501020812-333899,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_South_Korea

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/world/asia/08korea.html?_r=1

http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20101001000786

The term “iron fist” was often used to describe the rule of dictators like Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin as they terrorized Eastern Europe. A German official in the 1940’s, said he foresaw: “an iron curtain would fall over this enormous territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which nations would be slaughtered.”

The iron curtain represented the isolation and oppression over Eastern Europe until the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. However, there is still very much an iron fist rule in the East Bloc. Today its dictators are in the form of mafia and organized crime; those who intimidate to corrupt democracy and exploit the vulnerable––largely through young women and children being sold for sex.

As our team of 5 women set off for this region of the world, we felt the weight of the powers and principalities we would confront. Even stronger, we felt the excitement of joy and expectation, knowing our authority through Jesus would be sent out and we would see nations set free.

We faced the “iron curtain” reality in the concealment of exploited women and ignorance of the issue in the Polish and Ukrainian society. As widespread as awareness has become in the West, especially concerning key regions in Eastern Europe, it’s amazing to see how unaware these nations themselves still are. We must pray for a mighty tearing of this curtain and for a holy fear to turn many hearts. Our team was privileged to walk in His authority, see the fruits of His Kingdom, and prophesy of the fullness to come in Poland and Ukraine.

All throughout our ministry, we witnessed the power of a gentle touch as opposed to a steel grip. Even the hardest hearts softened quickly when confronted with a kind word and compassionate eyes.

Our team was shown such grace in the opportunity for street outreach to exploited women. We were invited to a safe-house, welcomed into an AIDS clinic and spoke to a group of graduating orphans about the dangers of trafficking lures.

The situation in Ukraine is especially dire. Statistics say that every one in three people in Ukraine has AIDS and that this country has the fastest growing AIDS epidemic in the world. This is evident as 90% of a local church congregation we visited had contracted the disease.

Despite this tragedy, we saw the Lord stir up zeal in the church. A Ukrainian pastor asked for training teams and materials to help the congregation start an outreach and an aftercare program in their region. Other church leaders in Ukraine invited us to speak at national conferences on the issue of trafficking and God’s heart for justice. We connected with leaders from Israel, Ireland, Poland and Ukraine––many wanting to screen Nefarious in their countries. The Lord definitely sparked a fire in hearts among His church.

God has done quite a work during this significant time in Eastern Europe!

An article by Benjamin Nolot was recently published in Relevant Magazine. Below is a teaser of the article:

While filming Nefarious: Merchant of Souls—a documentary on the global sex trade—I traveled to a small village on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I had heard that the village was a hotspot for child sex tourism, but I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived.

When the dust around my vehicle settled after the long trip down the bumpy dirt road, I saw a white Western man standing in front of a dilapidated shack. The man, probably in his late 40s, was bartering for sex with a child outside of a shanty brothel.

My film crew and I quickly exited our vehicle and approached the man. When he saw us, and noticed the equipment we had in tow, he sprinted toward the main highway. We gave chase, catching up to him just as he saddled the back of a moped taxi.

Adrenaline pumping, emotions swirling, I grabbed him by his shirt and stared straight into his eyes. The look on his face was one of sheer cowardice and it seemed there was a film of perversion glossed over his eyes. After I raised my voice, demanding he never return to the village again, I let him go.

As we walked back to our vehicle, I pondered what I had just faced. Who was this man? What was his story? How did he end up in this village, on the other side of the world, paying for sex with a child?

Then it occurred to me—this man didn’t wake up the day before and decide to fly to the other side of the world for a lustful, perverse transaction.

When first considering human trafficking, it may not seem like the issue has anything to do with you or I. To us, human trafficking seems like a troubling issue that poor souls somewhere out there—somewhere far from here—face.

Yet, when we begin to question the injustice, we must consider the condition of our culture. What kind of culture is producing so many men who are eager to buy women and children for sex, contributing to a $32 billion annual human trafficking industry? The same culture that produces and perpetuates a $100 billion per year pornography industry.

Boys growing up in this culture form an objectified view of females at an early age. Ninety percent of them will view pornography between the ages of 8-16 with the average age of initial exposure being 11.

When a young child’s fragile mind is exposed to the graphic images in pornography, it distorts his view of girls, sex and relationships. He begins to see them as inanimate objects, devoid of humanity—a thing to be conquered rather than a person to love.

By the time many reach adulthood, they have been disinhibited by their exposure to the graphic images in pornography. Consequently, a man will only fantasize for so long before he begins to rise up and demand the living embodiment of his masturbatory fantasy. As a result, we have an entire generation of men mongering for sex and willing to pay for it.

To read the full article by Benjamin Nolot, click here>

Picture a noose and you have a picture of Odessa.

Perhaps that is not a fitting image for many aspects of this Ukrainian city, but for the hundreds of thousands of vulnerable women throughout Europe, the Balkans and developing soviet countries, you cannot find a more perfect description. This port city is a bridge between Europe and everything east, in more ways than one. Odessa’s mass ports are strategically located between the source and destination countries of Romania and Moldova fixing a deadly recipe for this city to be a hot-bed for human trafficking.

The most recent Trafficking in Persons report lists such a dense grouping of countries that send or receive sex slaves to and from Ukraine that you cannot help but get the impression that Odessa might rightly be deemed the Slave Capitol of the World. Indeed, with Moldova––the greatest source country for trafficked women in Europe––along with many other high-risk countries as Ukraine’s neighbors, that title almost seems plausible.

In the same vein, it’s easy to answer the question of how women end up in slavery here: every way imaginable. From being lured in with false job offers, to being sold into slavery by an orphanage, from recruiters sent to rural villages, to outright abduction in major metropolitan areas, thousands are deceived. What is true about trafficking nearly everywhere in the world is magnified and exacerbated in Ukraine. The booming summer tourism industry in Odessa comes with a spike in demand for sex from foreign visitors and a heightened chaos of travel that makes exporting women with illegal passports much easier.

The result of such extreme marketing of women for sex is that Ukraine’s HIV epidemic is the fastest growing worldwide and the highest in Eastern Europe. Despite such obvious risk, the trade continues to grow and the traffickers are unchallenged. This is proven as in 2009, almost all convicted traffickers received no jail sentences but minor probation charges.

From within this sex-trade hub emerges all manners of stories that hold in tension the bizarre contradictions only made possible in a globalized economy that suffers an “acceptable” margin of expendable human beings. For example, most people will never learn that if they are deprived of natural light long enough, their skin turns blue. But this is exactly what a young woman found when she was trafficked out of Odessa and kept in a subterranean dungeon for God knows how long before being rescued.

The inter-connectedness of cultures, economies and countries represents to millions of people the realization of dreams and possibilities. That is precisely the promise held out to many young women who find themselves drawn into a life of sex slavery. The hopes and dreams for a beautiful and productive life that each of us have are the bait that traffickers use to ensnare women. It is not until the noose closes that many realize they have made a grave mistake.

In Odessa, this crossroads of cultures, ferries bring women from their exotic locations––Istanbul, perhaps?––when they are pregnant or sick. In other words, no longer useful for sex. Their fate, from there, is anyone’s guess. Perhaps they will end up like the two young girls depicted in bas-relief on a few buildings in Odessa: after being drawn into the white-slave trade, they hanged themselves. The bas-relief reminds everyone that the aftermath of slavery, devoid of God, is not freedom.

Prayer Points:

• Cry out for breakthrough in the Spirit and the realization of the worth of God’s women and children.
• Ask that God will raise up righteous police forces and turn this hub of trafficking into a hub for the Gospel.
• Ask that God would convert johns, traffickers, and victims and raise up a witness of reconciliation among them.

Sources:

“People Trafficking in Ukraine: Sea of Tears.” (The Economist, 2006)
“Sex Trafficking Trade Forces Women from Odessa to Massage Parlours in Britain.” (the Guardian, 2011)”
“Odessa Resorts Serve Scenery, Sex, and Slavery.” (Change.org, 2010)