This deeply unsettling experiment starts on a typical Monday morning on Manhattan's leafy Upper West Side, where commuters stroll by Starbucks and Central Park.
Is it really possible to purchase a child in less than 10 hours?
At 7:10 a.m., I'm off to see how long it takes to buy a child slave.
It's 45 minutes to Kennedy Airport and an hour or so wait in the terminal, then a 3½-hour flight to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
A band greets the flight.
By the time my team and I have collected our luggage, gone through immigration and customs, and are loaded into our vehicles, it's about 3:15 p.m.
As we leave the airport, two things become immediately apparent: Port-au-Prince is an amazing, vivid place, and it's also extremely poor. The U.S. State Department warns Americans against visiting here. United Nations peacekeepers patrol the roads while we drive with our own security team: two armed Haitian men in SUVs.
By 4:45 p.m., I'm poolside at one of the city's few upscale hotels. I'm wearing a hidden camera built into the strap of a bike messenger-style bag that's around my neck. There's another hidden camera in a leather satchel on the table, right next to the fruit plate and Evian water. My colleagues are manning cameras in hotel rooms overlooking the pool.
Our security guards are sitting discretely nearby.
That's when the man with whom I've arranged a meeting shows up.
He says he's a former member of parliament and that he has connections. In broad daylight, with hotel waiters walking by, he doesn't even flinch when I make a horrific request.
"If I would like to get a child to live with me and take care of me," I ask. "Could you do that?"
"Yes," he says. "I can."
He's speaking in Creole, the most prevalent Haitian language. The man doing the translation, who has set up the meeting, works for us (unbeknownst to the slave trafficker).
The trafficker assures me he's done this sort of transaction many times before.
"A girl or a boy?" he asks.
"A girl probably," I say.
"How old?"
"Maybe 10 or 11."
"Not a problem."
He says he can get me an 11-year-old girl, although he suggests that a 15-year-old might be better, because she'd be more "developed."
I'm thinking: I can't believe I'm having this conversation.
"And this is OK?" I ask. "I won't have any trouble from their parents or anything like that?"
"No, you won't have any problems with their parents."
"Why not?"
"When I give you the child, I will train it for you."
I'm not exactly sure what that means.
"I'm a little nervous." I say. "I just want to make sure that this is OK, that I'm not going to get in trouble, that this will be smooth, that you've done this before."
"I guarantee my service," says the trafficker, grinning. "I can get you your girl as early as tomorrow."
And now, the negotiation begins.
"So how much will it cost me to get a child?" I ask.
"The last one I gave was $300."
Trying to test the value of human life, I push a little.
"I have a friend who got one for $50."
"No," he says.
"What about $100?"
"$150," he offers.
I accept.
And there it is. It's about 5 p.m. Roughly 10 hours after leaving my office in New York City, I have successfully negotiated to buy another human being -- an 11-year-old girl, whose value is set at just $150.
As we conclude our meeting, I want to make sure the trafficker does not act on my request. I ask him to wait a day before doing anything. I assure him I'll call him tomorrow with my final answer. He agrees.
Now here is an issue that Al Gore and others should be more concerned about then global warming. I am going to list a whole bunch of statistics here but I think they are worth staring at for a while. This is seriously provoking me to the place of intercession for those who truly have no voice in the world today. I would suggest you take a few minuets out of your busy day to read these statistics.
This list does not even begin to scratch the surface. I think after reading a bit about it you will see that Human trafficking is a bit more important then the global warming.
This subject hits pretty close to home for me. As many of you know I spent a year in Africa before coming to IHOP. In Africa one of my many responsibilities was to help lead our weekly ministry to the prostitutes. Twice a week we would take a truck down to the inner city and bring loads of bread and would hold a church service. I became good friends with those girls over that year. It was weird walking down the streets of Maputo and having a group of prostitutes yell your name out as you walked around the corner. Talk about dirty looks from the on lookers! I think they enjoyed talking to us because for once in their lives someone actually cared about them and did not look at them as objects.
Some things still haunt me though to this day from those church services. I remember on a weekly basis sitting in those church services worshiping Jesus with the broken and hurting of the world. When suddenly a white pick up truck or a BMW would pull up around the corner. In the car would be a couple of men and suddenly we would loose two or three of the girls in our church service. What really got to me was seeing the young girls, 12 or 13, leave the church service to go of and do their “job.” On a weekly basis I would wittennes child prostitution first hand. I remember feeling helpless as I sat in the dirt with tears running down my face. Girls who were so innocent at times were having their purity and innocence taking from them on a daily basis. This is the only life they knew. To them it was natural, to them it was what their mothers had done for years before them. This was life for them on a daily basis.
I still to this day remember their faces and pray for them on a daily basis. I pray for the countless of street children whom I became friends with as well over the time I was there. I pray that in the midst of great darkness and hopelessness they would encounter the love of Jesus Christ. I pray that they, the weakest and the most broken of the earth would arise from the ashes and become some of the mightiest men and women to ever walk the face of the earth. I pray that they would walk in such goldiness and such humility that the earth would not be worthy of them.
Ill write more later on this. Its too hard to write more right now. Back to the facts. Read them, dwell on them, let them stir you to intercession, the only answer for these lost children of the world.
Here are the facts, true facts that can not be disputed:
1) The International Labour Organization estimates there are 218 million working children aged between five and 17 (2006)
2) 126 million are estimated to work in the worst forms of child labour — one in every 12 of the world’s five to 17 years olds (2006)
3) 74 million children under 15 are in hazardous work and should be “immediately withdrawn from this work” (2006)
4) 8.4 million children are in slavery, trafficking, debt bondage and other forms of forced labour, forced recruitment for armed conflict, prostitution, pornography and other illicit activities.
5) There are around 3000 enslaved Albanian children used for begging and cleaning windows and cars without payment in Italy and Greece.
6) An estimated 496,000 children are in slavery in Bangladesh.
7) Over 10-20 million people are subjected to debt bondage largely in India, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru and Philippines.
8) Of 35 million soccer balls stitched in Pakistan, children produce one quarter of the balls, most of them as bonded servants.
9) Nearly 500,000 minors work in virtual slavery conditions in Senegal.
10) “Restavek” the practice of sending children to serve as unpaid domestic labour for more affluent city dwellers exist in the country of Haiti. UNICEF estimated that 25,000 to 300,000 children, 85% of them girls, are victims of this practice.
11) Information gathered by the British charity, Christian Aid, and reported by Reuters, indicates that up to 10,000 children between ages 6 and 14 are enslaved in brothels in Sri Lanka.
12) There are no universally accepted figures for the number of bonded child labourers in India. However, in the carpet industry alone, human rights organisations estimate that there may be as many as 300,000 children working, many of them under conditions that amount to bonded labour.
13) Some NGOs estimate that the number of bonded labourers in India is 5 million persons. However, in a report released during the year, Human Rights Watch estimated that 40 million persons, including 15 million children, are bonded labourers. The report notes that the majority of bonded labourers are Dalits, and that bondage is passed from one generation to the next.
14) 90% of the 100,000 women in prostitution in Bombay, India, are indentured slaves.
15) Persons sometimes are sold into virtual slavery. Many boys from India, some of whom are as young as 4 years, end up as riders in camel races in West Asia and the Gulf States, especially to the United Arab Emirates, or begging during the Haj. Girls and women end up either as domestic workers or sex workers.
16) It takes up to 15 years for girls held in prostitution via debt-bondage in India to purchase their freedom.
17) The number of street children worldwide is almost impossible to know, although the WorldHealth Organization (WHO) and UNICEF in the mid ’90s estimated the number to be 100million.
18) The social phenomenon of street children is increasing as the world’s population grows; sixout of ten urban dwellers are expected to be under 18 years of age by the year 2005
19) According to UNICEF, there are about 25 million street children in Asia and an estimated 10million in Africa (1998).
20) Africa today has 10.7 million orphans just as a result of AIDS and the numbers are growing(UNAIDS). With fewer and fewer family members left to care for them, many–if not most–of these children will join the street children of Africa who are already there because of poverty, wars and ethnic conflicts
21) In the Philippines, the Department of Social Welfare and Development estimated, in 1991,1.2 million street children. Action International Ministries says 50,000 to 70,000 streetchildren live in Manila alone.
22) India’s Ministry of Social Welfare estimated that of the 10.9 million people residing inCalcutta in 1992, there were 75,000 to 200,000 children living in the streets. Agencies agree the number is much higher now, and deaths of parents from HIV/AIDS are likely to cause the numbers to rise more rapidly.
Don’t let predators, pimps and traffickers abduct or abuse women and children.
You are probably visiting this web site because you are like me. I can’t stand the thought of a child cowering in the darkness, alone and hopeless because some creep is taking advantage of their weakness and using them to do things no child should ever have to do. I am committed to the rescue and care of parentless children.
I don’t have any faith in my ability to help these kids, but I do have the faith that God our father cares about the least of them and he’ll use you and I to do His will. Throughout the Bible, He tells us to care for orphans and widows and He will empower us to do it.
We now have thousands of children and women under 24/7 care because people like you and I are standing in the gap to protect the vulnerable and care for the victims of trafficking, exploitation and brutality.
Our commission and that of our colleagues here and abroad is to make sure we can save children and give them a chance to hear the living word of God.
The commitment of the Child Trafficking Task Force of Warm Blankets Orphan Care is to rescue and care for orphans. We do that by teaming up with nationals in the refugee camps, streets, jungle hamlets, war zones and any other places where children are left to roam with no one to care for them. Trafficking is heaviest in places like Cambodia, Thailand, India and Indonesia where there is little protection and poverty puts the focus on mere survival.
You are part of the Child Trafficking Task Force team. Through your support, prayer, input and resources, you are putting kids in a protected environment and helping them to regain their childhood ….
Child traffickers, sex predators and bullies are after these kids. Let’s not let them have them.
-Craig Muller
President, Warm Blankets Orphan Care
and team member in the Child Trafficking Task Force
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