Every morning starts out normal. Kids go to school, parents go to work, and society functions as it would on any other day. Children make their way to the school buildings by car, bus, biking, or on foot. Everyone begins their first class as usual, unaware that something is absent. Parents go to work thinking their children have made it safely to school because why wouldn’t they? Everything is bliss until suddenly it’s not, and a child has gone missing.
Most parents have some sort of conversation with their children when they reach an age where they want to start going off alone with their friends. Even if they’re only ten or eleven, they want to start getting ice cream together or go on adventures with their friends down the nature trails. It may seem innocent and natural, but it often leaves a parent worried for their kids. At this point, most parents will talk to their children and explain the terrible people that live in the world like the ones who might kill them, assault them, or kidnap them. They end up going on this long speech telling their children about the buddy system, to watch for their surroundings, and never go into a secluded area without an adult. This was the talk I got, at least. I couldn’t go down the trails without an adult, I had to stay by my mom’s side in a foreign country, and I always had to be home before it got dark. This is the reality of life for any parent and child, all because of something like human trafficking.
Children are taken every day from their families and friends with seemingly no hope of escape, and some are transported to a second location where they will join other little kids from across the world into a life of being sold into physical or sex labor. They don’t know where they are, leaving them helpless. Kids are being transported across national borders and are forced into a life of relentless cruelty. Oftentimes, these kids are never found. They are thrown into involuntary labor until they are not desirable anymore, where they are probably killed so that they can’t run to the police. It’s hard to imagine what these kids are going through regularly, and because of that, nobody wants to talk about it.
Violent crime is one of those taboo topics no one wants to mention. However, human trafficking seems to get the least amount of awareness next to crimes like murder and burglary. This past summer, a movie called “The Sound of Freedom” was released in theaters. It’s the story of federal agent, Tim Ballard, who ends up working a case and saving a little boy who had just crossed national borders, starting in Honduras and ending in the United States. Ballard’s life is changed forever when the boy requests that he find the boy’s sister, who was taken as well. Ballard ends up going on a journey through Central America to find this young girl, where he ends up saving her in the Columbian jungle. Tim Ballard then spends the rest of his career working to find missing kids who have been trafficked throughout Central America. The story of this movie is something that should’ve been brought to theaters long ago. In fact, the movie was filmed in 2018 to be potentially released in 2019, however, it went through a series of setbacks that left the movie to be released in 2023. No one knows exactly why it took four years, but it’s highly speculated that it was because of the content and sore subject matter. Along with that, the movie struggled to get picked up by a streaming service for the same reasons. It can now be found on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.
With all of that being said, raise awareness of the horrors of human trafficking. Don’t stray away from it just because it may be too difficult of a topic. Millions of kids are being transported and sold every day, and it’s hard to put a stop to it. With that being said, when no one talks about it, finding the kids and catching the criminals becomes even harder.
