WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

 

http://cjonline.com/news/2011-09-14/documentary-explores-child-sex-trafficking#.Tnytp0dk-Tn

 

Website Link Includes Film Segment.

 

CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING FILM DOCUMENTARY - GIRLS

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"Not My Life," a documentary narrated by Glenn Close about human trafficking, will be shown Thursday evening at the Pozez Education Center of Stormont-Vail HealthCare as the first of the three-event "Human Trafficking: Here and Around the World" series organized by Topeka Center for Peace and Justice.  SUBMITTED

 

"Not My Life," a documentary narrated by Glenn Close about human child  trafficking

 

By Bill Blankenship

 

September 14, 2011 - "Not My Life" is a documentary about human trafficking and modern slavery . Oscar-nominated filmmaker Robert Bilheimer not only pulls back the curtains of the brothels of Mumbai, India, but also the truck stops of Oklahoma City and finds underage prostitutes in both places, including a young Wichita teenager.

 

 "Not My Life" bills itself as "the first documentary film to depict the horrifying and dangerous practices of human trafficking and modern slavery on a global scale." It depicts, the film synopsis says, "the unspeakable practices of a multibillion-dollar global industry.” Profits from it, narrator Glenn Close says, "are built on the backs and in the beds of our planet's youth."

"More than 100,000 underage girls are trafficked for sex in the United States today," Close says in the segment that features Angie, a young teeenage girl from Wichita who after running away with home with two other girls, found herself under the control of a pimp in Oklahoma City who threatened to beat or kill her and her companions if they didn't return with enough money plied through sex with truckers and other men in a truck stop.

Angie and other girls, mostly ages 12 to 17, were rescued and 15 pimps and traffickers arrested in an FBI sting operation code-named Stormy Nights, with a special agent involved in the operation interviewed in "Not My Life."

Other locations in the film include Romania, Italy, Ghana, Senegal, Guatemala, Cambodia, Europe, and Egypt, and issues other than sexual exploitation include child labor, begging, and even being forced to be a child soldier.

Although trafficking and slavery involves adult victims, "Not My Life" zeroes in on the fact that vast majority of the exploited are children.

"What kind of society cannibalizes its own children?" Bilheimer asks. "Can we do these sorts of things on such a large scale and still call ourselves human in any meaningful sense of the term?"