How Big Is the Industry Sexually Exploiting Children?

Reality is staring straight at us. The problem is bigger than we think.

I know you don’t want to think about it. I do not want to think about it. But reality is staring straight at us. The recent revelations on the human trafficking of children have been so numerous it is as if the voices of these children are crying out for relief at an ever-increasing volume. I beg of you; we cannot ignore them any longer.

The United States Department of Health estimates that approximately 27.6 million people were human trafficked in 2021. Of those, 6.3 million were forced into sexual exploitation. A staggering 1.7 million children (about half of all children trafficked) are forced into commercial sexual exploitation. Those numbers alone are devastating.

But the numbers are also faceless. In a sense, they are dehumanizing because it is hard to relate to simple numbers. That’s where the new movie phenomenon, The Sound of Freedom, has been so helpful. It puts a face on and helps us connect with the victims and the noble efforts of so many, such as former federal agent Tim Ballard, portrayed in the movie by Jim Caviezel. The reality hits deep inside as you watch the movie. It is a must-see. (I won’t spoil it for you).

But the reaction to the movie by the “mainstream media” suggests the problem is much bigger than the numbers would tell, especially in America. The shameful headline by the Washington Post concentrated not on the victims but on connecting it to “QAnon.” “The low-budget film about child sex trafficking almost topped the box office on July 4. But its star Jim Caviezel has linked it to the QAnon movement,” read the top lines of their disgraceful piece. The Guardian called it a “QAnon-adjacent thriller seducing America.” The emphasis on the quote is mine, but I just wanted to highlight for you how malicious the efforts are to quash the exposure this film is giving on this issue.  According to the “journalists” at The Guardian, those exposing this heinous crime are the real exploiters “seducing” America, not the loathsome sex traffickers.

The list goes on and on; it’s not just those two. Rolling Stone chimed in to say, “Sound Of Freedom Is a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms.” They emphatically don’t want you to see it. They will shame you. The movie is “designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer,” writer Miles Klee says.

The forces of darkness have come out in full force against this movie—against shedding light on this issue. Needless to say, once again, you must see this movie.

I’ll give you one more revealing story. When I read the headline from Bloomberg, “QAnon and Sound of Freedom Both Rely on Tired Hollywood Tropes,” I rolled my eyes, adding it to the massive, multi-million dollar effort to suppress this issue. Then, independent reporter

Andy Ngô pointed out that the person writing the story is a leftist activist who “was the spokesperson for M.A.P. (minor-attracted person) advocacy group, Prostasia.”

If your jaw just dropped, we are kindred spirits. “Wait a minute,” I said, “this can’t be true, can it?” Bloomberg, a respected newspaper, wouldn’t give voice on this particular topic to someone with such reprehensible background, would they? Yes, they would. They did. Proudly.

Ngô highlighted a tweet by the writer of the piece, Noah Berlatsky, who said in 2017, “Pedophiles are essentially a stigmatized group …” Such are the voices at the top of our media institutions. The many obstacles the movie had to overcome even to be released show us it goes way beyond just journalism. The film was shot five years ago but was shelved by Disney, who acquired 21^st Century Fox, and it was rejected by multiple studios before Angel Studios finally acquired its distribution rights. May God continue to bless them. The movie has now grossed $100 Million in the U.S.

The opposition was not about money. The story, the topic itself, was the issue. Its alleged proximity to the entertainment industry is the issue. This is so well known it has actually become a topic for stand-up comedy jokes. But there is a real spiritual darkness about it that is unavoidable. These are real children we are talking about here. Real victims.

Frankly, all of it has left me seriously wondering just how deep this problem is within our own country. I confess that the monumental failures in the Jeffrey Epstein debacle had me already mourning for our country. Epstein was convicted for sex trafficking children to apparently no one, for not one person has been arrested, let alone convicted, as a result of his and his partner’s apprehension. Shame on us for allowing that to happen.

We have a much bigger child sexual exploitation problem in our country than we realize. A recent video from @iFightForKids left me emotionally devastated. This group poses as children online to get pedophiles to interact with them and even get them to go “meet up with kids” in person, where they are confronted. In that video, they engage a man and ask, “What is the youngest” picture he has traded online. The shocking answer, after some reluctance to answer from the man, is that it is “infants.” But what he says after is the more problematic: “infants, because that’s what people do.” The interviewer repeats it in shock, “Infants!” “That’s what people do,” comes the reiteration.

Dear reader, this is more common than we think. Grown men pass around pornographic pictures of infants online.

That’s the reality staring at us. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

I say we fight back. I say we speak. I say we shout until they listen. May the Sound of Freedom never stop. Let it grow louder.