by Cal Bombay

A few days ago, my daughter and I went to watch the movie, The Sound of Freedom.

I knew the movie was getting a lot of attention and had a vague idea what it was about.  But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw—or for the tightening in my gut and the crushing memories of my own experience in South Sudan. I watched with an altogether too familiar abhorrence.

You see, I too was involved in human trafficking twenty-five years ago. (see: I Owned Slaves  – Gardens of Hope (gardensofhopecharity.org)

As I watched the truth of present-day human trafficking being exposed in vivid emotional detail, I felt a wrenching in my soul for the victims. How could I not when faced with the horrors and inhuman treatment of children being kidnapped or bought, then sold and used in stone-cold but highly organized money-based brutality. It shook me to the core.

It brought up memories of buying slave children in Sudan. Unlike the monsters portrayed in this film, I was there to pay for their freedom.

On the movie screen and in real life, I’ve seen their misery. I’ve witnessed the physical and emotional trauma of ruthless sexual perverts.

What’s happening is demonic.

Two million “stolen” people, mainly young women and children, are right now in their prisons of repeated abuse. It shatters my trust in our “enlightened modern society” which allows it to happen and has produced some new shadowy laws and language which seem to endorse this kind of evil.

How I wish I were young again and could wage war against such heinous wickedness! But that is a fight for another generation to take up.

At 86, all I can do is continue working from the other side of this societal mess, feeding children and families whose only prison is long-term refugee status. At least these children can smile and even laugh! … and eat when we can get to them.

You can help by providing gardens for food, supporting organizations with integrity who are working to stop human trafficking, and most of all, by praying.