Some things stop you in your tracks

I went to a lunch today hosted by a local businessman to hear a woman from this organization talk about human trafficking and sex slavery. I don't pray for the Lord's return often, if at all. Today I did. I begged the Lord to come back this afternoon. She talked about some horrific things that thousands and thousands of children and young women have to experience every day.

She does a lot of work in Sudan and Romania to prevent children from entering sex slavery, but some of the most shocking stuff was about the US. She said Atlanta is known as one of the best cities in the world for businessmen to fly in, get any type of sex they want, and be home for dinner. She talked about an investigation that found just one of the sex trafficking rings had 1,000 sex slaves locked in basements of different houses all around Atlanta. Atlanta! That was just one ring. They were set to bust up the whole ring but it leaked somehow and only 20 kids were rescued. They found information that detailed how much different services cost. I have to write this because she said it and you should know that this is real... and you don't want to read it... but she said they saw that for several thousand dollars, someone could pay to rape a child to death. That some of the kids are just used up and they're considered expendable. This is in Atlanta.

This article from the NY Times verifies some of the information about Atlanta:
http://www.makewaypartners.org/SexTradeChillsAtlantaStreets.htm

I found this story linked on her website about a brothel in Raleigh they busted up earlier this year. I copied an excerpt from the article because I found it amazing we don't have a state law that deals with this yet.

http://www.newsobserver.com/266/story/434136.html

"Taber worked with a girl not yet a teenager who was brought to Chatham from Florida by her father, or at least a man who claimed to be her father.

He set her up in business.

"She was so traumatized, she won't speak of what happened to her," Taber said. "When she was brought in, her system was full of vet medications; that's how she was being treated for worms."

Yet in that case, there have been no trafficking charges filed. In part that is because there is not a state law that speaks to the issue of sex trafficking."

Here is the website of the organization: www.makewaypartners.org. Here is the page with links to articles: http://www.makewaypartners.org/education_articles.html.

I've asked her to come speak some Sunday at Visio Dei and she sounded like she would like to make that happen.

I don't know what to say.

Pray.