11.17.2014

Human Trafficking Creates a Personal and Family Graveyard

Families and individuals are destroyed by the tragedy of trafficking human beings as a commodity.  A song by Christian band Silent Planet entitled "XX City Grave" is written from the perspective of a female prostitute/sex slave/male order bride and her personal experience of abuse. The emotion here expressed reveals how deeply destructive is the horror of human trafficking - a tragedy which leaves individuals and families annihilated in its wake.

Regent's Center for Global Justice, Human Rights, and the Rule of Law is working to combat human trafficking domestically and around the globe.  To learn more about the work of the Center, and the research Regent law faculty have published on these issues visit http://www.regent.edu/acad/schlaw/globaljustice/publications.cfm.

    XX City Grave
    This injustice renders my thoughts ineffectual. Forgive me, Lover, and forget my sullen face. Privilege brings us to this place of human currencies. (We) buried our sisters in a glass display, only to evaporate to a toxic skyline - underneath we sell off the bodies.

    My body became a graveyard where they buried thirsty souls. Show me your righteous leader; I'll show you the bullet holes. The preacher[i] with the parched tongue and the "God" that he controls: "Shake off the sin! Shake off the sin!" And spit out your cacophony of lies.

    I'll climb through your screen and bleed out the image you left in me.[ii]

    But God, are you man? Then how do you see me? From where you sit up in heaven[iii], looking down on my hell. My body chokes back.
    "I have nothing to draw with and the well is deep - where can I get living water?"[iv]

    Enslaved in the "Land of the Free"[v] - my prison is our wedding bed where you left me for dead. You'll leave us for dead. Apathy was our anchor to a digital sea[vi] where you drown in the comfort of our complicity.

    Can Love save me? Will Your wrath avenge us?[vii]
                                                                                        by Silent Planet

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i. Our sister’s captor; Several famous pastor types – names omitted for legal reasons
ii. Sex slaves forced into pornography, speaking back to our collective male gaze.
iii. Psalm 115:3; 139:8
iv. John 4:11
v. America
vi. Thrice, 2007
vii. Deuteronomy 32:35

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