Tag Archives: vulnerable

Nefarious – Merchant of Souls

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Day Four

Greetings from Bologna!

I came here to see the screening of Nefarious.  Nefarious is a film about human trafficking (modern slavery), the vast majority of which is for purposes of prostitution.  The film is a deeply disturbing documentary which chronicles the lives of prostitutes in Europe, Thailand, and the US.  The organization that produced the film is Exodus Cry (http://exoduscry.com/).

The word nefarious means extremely wicked or villainous, and that describes the traffickers and also the men who frequent prostitutes.

The girls in the film had been rescued from prostitution.  Some described how they were tricked into prostitution by boyfriends who turned out to be traffickers.  Others told how they had been kidnapped.  Both of these went through a process of breaking-down their will and their resistance.  This process involves isolation, humiliation, drugging, severe beatings, and repeated rape until all the fight has gone out of them—along with any self-esteem or human dignity.

Some girls were made to strip naked and walk in line across a stage in a slave auction for buyers to bid on.  These buyers were the owners of brothels and massage parlors throughout Europe.  Often the buyers would manhandle them, forcing them to open their mouth and show their teeth, checking them over like merchandise.  Some buyers asked to “try the product” before they buy.

Some of the girls had been orphaned or abandoned by their parents in Eastern Europe.  One described how the orphanage director had encouraged the girls to “go off with the boys and have some fun.”  They were prostituting them.  Then when they reached 18 years of age, the traffickers came to pick them up from the orphanage and they were never heard from again.  East European girls have been trafficked into prostitution all around the world.  Their passports have been stolen by their captors.  They are invisible because they have no family, and usually they have no knowledge of the language in the place where they end up, except for what they need to know for working in prostitution.  The traffickers prey upon the most vulnerable: orphans and children.

Anywhere there is prostitution, there is trafficking.  The legalization of prostitution only helps the traffickers by giving them a “legitimate” market.  But legalization in no way means that the girls are working as prostitutes by choice.  The only girls in the film who had entered prostitution voluntarily had been lured by the glamour of becoming a high-priced Las Vegas call girl.  They dreamed of meeting and marrying a high-roller who could give them a luxurious lifestyle.  They were each disillusioned by the realities of prostitution.  Part of that reality is that some of the clients are men who hate women with a murderous passion.  All of the women had suffered beatings and strangling.  The thing that each of the voluntary prostitutes had in common was a history of sexual abuse as children, and the low self-esteem that comes with being the victim of abuse.

The purpose of the film is to educate the public about this extreme evil that exists all over the world.  The film also shows the only country in the world in which prostitution has virtually ended: Sweden.  Sweden’s approach is simple and effective: severely punish the clients and the traffickers.  In effect: stop the demand and prostitution stops.

Exodus Cry works on a 3 point attack: Prevention, Intervention, and Restoration.  The ultimate goal is to have people who are healed: physically, emotionally, and spiritually—and not only the girls, but also the clients and traffickers, whenever possible.

So what does all this have to do with my fasting and prayer for understanding of the things to come?  I believe that it is just a confirmation of darkness of these End Times days.  It’s confirmation that I am on the right track by fasting and praying for understanding.  Most of these girls were deceived in one way or another.  When the Antichrist comes upon the world stage, he will come with such great deception that even the elect, God’s chosen ones, will be in grave danger of falling for his lies.  This calls for us to be alert—super-alert!  We cannot afford to coast through these days on auto-pilot.

You can get involved with Exodus Cry through: Prayer, Awareness, Reform, and Donation.  Exodus Cry is above all a prayer movement.  They wisely recognize that none of this will change without prayer.  They also realize that nothing will change without laws that punish the men who exploit women and children.  I want to encourage each of you to support Exodus Cry with your prayers and finances.  All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.  Now that you know, you have the obligation to help the “least of these.”  God is good!  Go do good, too!

Mourning—The Second Time Around

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Grief is a process, and not an easy one.  This morning I learned that my father-in-law died.  This is the second time I’ve mourned his loss.  And I can tell you that it hurts just as badly the second time.

Let me explain: I was divorced in 2008.  I noted at that time that divorce is like a death in the family—multiple deaths in my case, since my ex-husband’s family has been cut off from all contact with me.  We had been married 33 years—all my adult life.  I had embraced my husband’s family and loved them as my own, so losing them made divorce all the more painful.  At that time I mourned the loss of each member of his family, including my father-in-law.  Now I ache at the thought of how these people I loved (in truth still love) are suffering the loss of this sweet man.  But they are as dead to me as he is, and that makes it very hard to endure.

My sons, although grown at the time of the divorce, have been caught in the middle.  We are all doing our best to learn how to live with the fact of divorce.  They’ve been told not to talk to me about my ex or any of his family.  At first, I had also asked them not to talk to their dad or his family about me.  But when I saw the difficult position it had put them in, I relented.  It has been said that to truly love, you’ve got to be willing to be vulnerable.  For my sons, I am willing to be vulnerable.  I would rather suffer than cause my sons to suffer.  But I can’t do anything about what they’re going through now.  I can only stand by and watch them in their pain.

When my younger son called this past winter to tell me of his dad’s impending heart surgery, I could only listen sympathetically.  His voice was constricted with pain at the possibility of losing his dad.  At the same time there was another worry: he told me that he had gotten his dad’s permission to call me only after promising to make me promise not to try and contact his family.  Of course I assured him that I wouldn’t try to contact any of them, while also trying to reassure him that his dad would be fine (which he was).

But there’s more to my pain than all this: I was the one who initiated divorce proceedings.  That’s a fact that I don’t share with everyone because Christians can be very judgmental about the issue of divorce.  My sons know that I divorced their dad, and not the other way around.  No doubt his family all know that, too.  At times like this I sometimes wonder: if I had known the pain it would cause my sons, would I still have divorced their dad?  But I know the answer.  I had to divorce him.  Knowing that doesn’t make all this any easier.  This is the path I’ve got to walk, and unfortunately my sons share the suffering.

Most of the time I live my life in the present, facing the future, and busily focusing on the tasks God has for me this day.  But when something like this comes it’s an emotional blast from the past—in the explosive sense.  And the pain, self-doubt, and loss are fresh and new.  And yet in the midst of all the suffering (mine, my sons’, my ex-family’s), I know that God is good.