Hello everyone!
First of all, thank you to everyone who participated in the Christmas blog hop! I picked a winner and notified that person today! Please see my website for winner information under December Events. I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends!
Yes, I know I'm starting two days after Christmas with a very serious topic and a less than comforting picture. I am doing so because over Christmas while most of us where spending time with our families and friends, these men, women, boys and girls had no break from being trafficked. They had no break from being abused physically, sexually, emotionally and mentally. They will have been sold and abused over and over again by the time you read this. Those who were not necessarily trafficked also received no break from their abuse. The abuse continued through the holiday. There was no joy for these men, women, boys and girls. No presents, no good meal, no songs, just darkness, hopelessness and for some there was death. Christmas means nothing to them, it is just another "work day" or another day they hope their abuser will decide to leave them alone. They do not know the joy of Christmas.
I say all of this because I need America to desperately wake up! This is not going on in another country over Christmas, this is going on in our own country! We even have domestic violence and sexual abuse occurring in our churches and I'm not just talking about the controversies of the Catholic church! We have "Christian men" buying sex from girls trafficked by pimps and even visiting legal brothels which further damages these women because many of them started in the sex industry as trafficked children or teens. The illusion of freedom and empowerment in "legal prostitution" is just that, an illusion. Legal brothel owners are no better than the pimps who traffic women! Wake up America! Wake up! Open your eyes and see!
Both sex trafficking and domestic violence have very similar patterns of lying, control and identity theft. Traffickers use the same tactics as the abusive/violent partner. Although we may not see them as equal, they are equal, equally evil because they set out to accomplish the same thing: the control of another person and the emotional theft of who they are as a person.
Many traffickers, those trafficked and even legal prostitutes have suffered some kind of abuse in their past - mostly domestic violence including sexual abuse from childhood. Most abusers have a similar pattern as do some of their victims. That is how they spent their Christmas's. They may have never known the love of a person much less how much God loves them. They may have never heard why that little baby came to earth - they are one of the many reasons He came to earth, to set them free, both the abuser and the victim of abuse; the trafficker and the trafficked and the prostitute.
The bottom line is simply this, if we don't go to them and help them, who will tell them about Jesus? How will they know they can be set free both literally and spiritually? How will they know they are better than a slave? How will they know they are better than a slave trader? How will they know they can be empowered without using sex? If we don't tell them, they won't know and they will continue in the same patterns and victims will continue to be victims. Evil wins if we do nothing. Evil wins if we don't tell them.
I can't live with that, can you? I can't live with evil anymore. I can't and won't tolerate it anymore. I can't turn a blind eye to this anymore! I choose to do something about it. I choose to take a stand. What about you?
If you want to know more about the topics of sex trafficking, prostitution and what you can do here are some good references:
www.humantraffickinghotline.org
www.thedragonflyhome.org
Documentaries available on Youtube: Trafficked No More (explicit content) and Selling the Girl Next Door (explicit content)
I implore you in this new year to open your eyes to those around you! Things are not always what they seem. You can be a light in the dark and you can change someone's life in ways you never thought possible.
Pushing back the darkness,
Elizabeth