SOLD

I just finished reading the book Sold by Patricia McCormick. A friend recommended it to me and I couldn't put it down. It was in the young adult section of the library but I'm not sure why. It certainly is not light-hearted fare. The book was a quick read though and I finished it in one night (and I'm not a fast reader). In the book, McCormick tells the story of Lakshima, a 13 year old girl in Nepal who is sold by her stepfather to a brothel in India. McCormick's writing is poetic and paints for readers a picture of sexual slavery through a series of short day-in-the-life vignettes. Sadly, the story, while being a work of fiction, is based in fact - lots of fact. All over the world, human beings are being bought and sold like property. The more I have gotten involved with the orphan crisis the more this issue of human trafficking - and sex trafficking in particular - keeps coming up. If a child is an orphan and ages out of an orphanage, as often happens to children around Lakshima's age in places like Russia, how is that child, because that is what she still is at 14, going to survive other than to sell the only thing she has - her body? As a part of the Benevolent Bazaar our ministry hosted at my church's women's retreat, we featured a group called International Princess Project. They work in India to help women who are getting out of the sex trade by providing them with job training so they can support themselves - and their children - with dignity. If a mother can support herself with a safe job that feeds her family, then her children are less likely to become orphans in the first place. So really it is an issue of both intervention and prevention. Girls and women who have been trafficked are in need of rescue and those who have not yet been trafficked need to be protected from this fate by being educated about what is really going on when someone comes to their village and offers them a job as a "maid" in another country. Right now, Children's Hopechest is launching a program in Moldova to fight sex trafficking of young girls in this poor country. You can buy a necklace for Mother's Day that will help to fight both orphanhood and sex trafficking through Adoption Fathers. Proceeds from these sales will help support what Hopechest is doing in Moldova.

I am anxious to learn more about this important and tragic issue, particulary as it relates to orphans. Next on my reading list is the book Not For Sale. The bottom line is that something must be done about this. Innocent girls not much older than my own should never have to endure the horrific things that little Lakshimas all over the world do every day, powerlessly imprisoned in their own lives.




As far as it depends on me, I cannot let this happen on my watch to children who in essence become orphans when they are sold. Not as a mother of two young girls I would die to protect. Who is going to protect orphaned girls like Lakshima? It has to be me and it has to be you. It's going to take all of us.

To read more about this issue, check out my blogger friend Brandi. She's been writing some great stuff on this lately.