Paid For

I’m back up and running this week, although I’m completely bogged down at my full-time job. 

On the writing front, I’m trying to finish the edits on my current manuscript, so I can begin the agent submission process. In addition, the publication subscription for my self-published novel (All that is Right and Holy) is about to expire. Because I published it back in 2009 (prior to the e-book craze), there was no electronic component to the publishing package. I’ve decided to allow the book to expire with its current publisher. I’m going to update it (as a lot of change has happened within the anti-trafficking movement since then), format it for e-book distribution, and re-publish it under a different title. I hope to have that completed and ready to go by the end of the year. Stay tuned for more on that.

In the meantime, this week I’m featuring books on the blog. Today’s book goes with my Thursday sex trafficking theme, but it’s also a book I want to read this month.

Paid For is Rachel Moran’s memoir of her life as a survivor of sex trafficking in Dublin, Ireland. Prostituted from the age of fifteen to twenty-two, Moran finally broke free from the life. She graduated from university and moved toward a brighter future. She is now an activist combating prostitution in all forms. 

Moran has been instrumental in convincing legislators in Ireland to adhere to the Nordic model of criminalizing buyers of the sex trade rather than the victims. Her message is that prostitution is never really consensual and never okay. 

I love reading memoirs, don't you? I hope to have a full review of Paid For in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, Rachel Moran will be signing books in DC this evening if any of you are in the area. 

Abolition, Restoration, and Love146

This week I want to highlight a group called Love146. They are an international anti-trafficking group with US offices in New Haven and Houston, who offer safe housing and rehabilitation for girls rescued from sex trafficking; they also offer training and resources for those willing to go out and work in the trenches.

Their moving introduction video talks of how Love146 was created, when several of the co-founders embarked upon an undercover operation in Southeast Asia in 2002, hoping to learn how best to fight the horrors of child trafficking. They were unprepared for what they saw—in once instance, children with numbers attached to them, sitting behind a window, watching cartoons while waiting to be ordered off of a menu by number. Literally. One of the co-founders admits to feeling an overwhelming rage and desire to smash the window, to pull the girls to safety. Because this was an undercover mission, that response was impossible. They felt helpless. But one of the girls, #146, changed everything for them. Whereas most of the other children’s faces registered hopelessness and resignation—a typical and very human response to repeated trauma—in the eyes of #146 they saw defiance. She was still registering a desire to fight, there was still a light in her eyes. She was their call to action, and the reason Love146 was created.

 

Their mission statement is, “Abolition and Restoration! We combat child trafficking & exploitation with the unexpected and restore survivors with excellence.”

If you have a chance, pop over to their website and check them out. They work in the trenches. They see the unimaginable.