Free At Last
Sunday, September 22 is Freedom Sunday.
International Justice Mission's mandate is to end slavery in our lifetime. FAIR's partnership with IJM provides easy access for our Fellowship churches to the resources of IJM and provides the means by which we can join in the fight to free those who have become victims of exploitation.
"On a country to country basis, End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for sexual purposes (ECPAT), a leading global NGO, estimates that at any given time 22,500 to 40,000 children are being sold for sex in Thailand, 60,000 to 75,000 in the Philippines, and an estimated 30,000 in Mexico…While loathsome and incomprehensible, the action of parents selling their children into slavery must be seen against the harsh reality of three factors … poverty, corruption and impunity. Poverty helps create a supply of vulnerable children for traffickers globally. Income from the sex industry is a major contributor to Southeast Asian economies and within the last decade has accounted for an estimated 2 to 14 percent of the gross domestic product of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand."*
Can we make a difference when the statistics are so staggering?
The answer to that question is a rounding: "yes!"
Take, for example, the story of Torayno who was arrested in 2019 in Cebu City after police discovered thousands of images and videos in his room depicting children being sexually abused. The combined efforts of police in Australia, authorities in the Philippines, and with the help of IJM's Criminal Analysis Centre, helped identify him, uncover his network, and expose the measures he had taken to hide his activities.
Eight children were rescued as an outcome and are receiving post-traumatic care. Read the whole story, and others on IJM's website.
For some, every day is Freedom Sunday and you can be a part of that. For more information on FAIR's partnership with International Justice Mission click here.
*Invisible Chains: Canada's Underground World of Human Trafficking, Benjamin Perrin, Penguin Group (Canada), Toronto, ON, 2010, p 23, 25