iEmpathize

Becoming a Voice for Trafficked Children  by Julia Waneka

I was first introduced to this issue of human trafficking a few years ago at a small indie music concert. Halfway through their set, the band began playing a couple intense, and almost bizarre, songs. As the lyrics started to talk about “a little boy stolen from his bedroom…now wearing a dress,” I was completely captivated and disturbed by the message this band was throwing at me.  I had absolutely no context for what he was singing about, but something in his voice compelled me to understand why he had written such a graphic song. I bought their EP before leaving the concert, and on the back I found a web address.

The address led me to a website about human trafficking. I read story after story about boys and girls finding themselves trapped in a cycle of violence, pain, and abuse.  Someone had stolen them from their families, stolen their innocence, and used them as sex slaves. Children, whose voices should have been heard laughing playing on playgrounds, or learning to read aloud, were now reduced to silent tears. They found themselves in a dark room, no name, and no voice.

A few months after visiting the concert, and my first introduction to the mind-boggling concept of human sex trafficking, I attended a benefit to raise awareness of this terrifying reality. There, I heard another song about a girl who had been called by her number at a brothel so long that she no longer remembered her own name. Her own name. She been reduced to only knowing herself as a number for a man to select, pay for, and abuse to his delights. My heart felt hollow, my limbs felt like jello, I felt helpless and guilty for not knowing. I wanted to save this girl. I wanted to stand up and shout her name over and over, until the whole world remembered her, until everyone knew her name-especially her.

Since being introduced to the issue, I have gone through cycles of extreme motivation, and extreme helplessness.  What did I have to offer at all?  I finally realized, I had my voice, a small circle of influence, and I could speak for those who have been quieted. I could be a voice for the children locked in rooms for years at a time, who have stopped their laughter, stopped their songs, some who have even stopped screaming. I have not been silenced, I can call them by their names, I can use my voice and try to end the nightmare. 

Employees of a Lafayette, CO massage parlor are under investigation for prostitution after customers told police they paid for sexual favors there, according to a search warrant. Read more at http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/apr/01/lafayette-police-body-fitness-massage-happy-ending/

Over the last several weeks, we began post-production work on a short film about the experiences from our iE Launch Trip last November through Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines. The film will be based around the stories from the team of empathizers as we encountered the issue of human trafficking, some of us for the first time. On the Launch Trip, our team visited red-light districts, neighborhoods and villages where children are at risk as well as safe-homes where children are being restored. The film will be ready Summer 2009. We will be touring the U.S. with our Film and Forum, the Empathy Experience art exhibit, and our concert initiatives throughout the Summer and Fall 2009. To host the full Empathy Experience including the Empathy Exhibit Art Tour in your city, on your campus, in your home, and/or in your faith community, contact us at info@iempathize.org.

The CU student film crew Jessie Marek and Tim Hill  (Photo by Peter Gibson)

Thank you so much for all the contributions and overwhelming support. We are aggressively developing the media from the Launch Trip. We are confident that the work we are doing will inspire thousands to explore and engage in this issue. Thank you for your consideration and for joining the cause of ending child sex slavery!

Photo by Center Avenue Imaging

iEmpathize’s last trip to Asia was spent gathering “artifacts” and film / photography media. The idea was to create an experiential art exhibit that told the basic story of child sex trafficking. Read what Professor Kirsten Wilson had to say about her experience…

The week before spring break, a couple of my students invited me to an event happening on the CU campus (University of Colorado), jointly sponsored by CU-SAMS (CU Students Against Modern Slavery) and iEmpathize, an organization that works to connect people and resources to issues of injustice (with a current focus on the issue of child sex trafficking).

The event at CU was an “Empathy Experience,” an interactive silent vigil/exhibit set up to connect people to the issue of child sex trafficking.  As soon as I got the invitation, I felt a strong urge to attend, and made arrangements to do so.  Here’s why:

I agree that child sex trafficking is one of the darkest, most horrific injustices in the world today.  And I believe the issue must be brought out into the open and stopped–that WE NEED TO STOP IT.

Beyond that, as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I have tasted a slice of what it means to be wounded in that deep place of the heart.  Thankfully, I have also tasted a slice of what it means to be rescued and to walk through (and keep walking through) healing in that arena.  And as I grow more secure in that, I begin to feel a deepening burden for others who in some way have been sexually victimized, and a growing curiosity about what part God might want me to play in being a force for justice and compassion and healing in that dark, dark arena.

And beyond that, I felt an affinity with the idea that iEmpathize invites people into a multi-sensory, interactive experience that integrates art–and artifacts–with the statistics in a way that creates a personal connection with the children impacted by sex trafficking.  I’m an artist and a communicator–I get that.

So, I attended the Empathy Experience.  I joined others in silently walking the path through a room that brought us face to face with the reality of what is being done to so, so many innocent children.

I worked for ten years as part of a team that strived to communicate truth creatively, interactively, through various artistic media.  With that background, I say this:  the Empathy Experience was very well done.  It professionally presented the reality of child sex trafficking in a way that was simple, artistic, and powerful.  The displays were neither graphic nor offensive–by which I mean to say:  the crimes are highly offensive, the display itself was not.  The display was simple, straightforward, honest, which left the offense where it belongs–on the offenders.  There was no preaching, no one talking during the experience.  The only words were on little placards next to the artifacts, paragraphs to describe what I was looking at.  Or simple statistics flashed on a screen.  There was no one telling me what I ought to think or feel.  There was merely(!) the gift of space and time provided for me to look at the reality of what is happening and to allow my heart to respond.

I do not know how other hearts responded to the Empathy Experience, but my heart was breaking at the things I saw.  The photo you see with this entry is but one example.  Here is a piece of what is printed on the placard:

“These sandals were found at the entrance of a brothel… 90% of the children in this neighborhood have been sold for sex at least once and the children victimized are as young as six years old…”

Photo by Aimée Hartecramer

Those sandals were made for feet smaller than those of my seven-year-old daughter.  I somehow managed not to let my inward churning spill out into actual tears or sobs.

But why?

There are things in this world that ought to be cried about.  Injustices in this world that ought to awaken in us a hot, hot anger at the injustice and a deep, deep burden for the victims…

I’m still, two weeks later, mulling over my experience…  Empathy is one thing–a very, very good thing.  But engaging is another, and I need to consider how to engage…

Photo by Center Avenue Imaging

Kirsten Wilson is a professor at Rivendell College in Boulder. To visit her blog and read this entry in its entirety visit:

http://www.kirstenwilson.net/www.kirstenwilson.net/Blog/Entries/2009/4/4_Empathy_Experience.html#

www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/cusams

TO HOST THE EMPATHY EXPERIENCE contact us at info@iempathize.org.