Prayerful steps to end the evils of modern-day slavery

BY ELIZABETH MATA

"MODERN" slavery, or human trafficking, has become a nine-billion-dollar-a-year global industry involving 27 million people. Increasingly it is tied to organized crime.

Slaves can be found in fields, brothels, homes, mines, and construction sites. A recent report from DePaul University's Human Rights Law Institute says that 80 percent of those sold into slavery are under the age of 24, and many are women and children, employed as recruitment for armed conflict, pornography, prostitution, and other illicit activities. Although the majority end up in Africa and India, at least 14,500 are trafficked into the United States every year. The average cost of a slave—considered disposable when he or she is too old or sick—is under $100.

Often, people are tricked into slavery by being promised a job or marriage in another country, only to find when they get there, that they are stranded because no such opportunity exists. Then the slavers require them to pay off their return passage by working in low-level jobs, often in the sex industry. But the loans are never paid off because the traffickers always find new charges to add, and the victims can't escape because there's nowhere to go. Slavers often threaten to kill family members back home if an individual flees.

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