GENERATION OF CHANGE: Videos of Truth

In a series of posts entitled 'GENERATION OF CHANGE' - TFC has proudly invited an elite group of young writers and artists from Texas Lutheran University to share their thoughts on participating in, producing, writing, editing, and shooting 'Videos of Change.'   Henry Moon, details his experience of synthesizing the human sex trafficking story into a 30 second awareness video for www.hopeforthesextrafficked.org.

Henry's first article can be found here. 

All videos produced will also be featured on theatreforchange.org.


Videos of Truth
By:  Henry Moon

Somewhere in the fog of sifting through the hours and hours of raw footage, my perspective changed. I learned something about myself. I, like others, had a lot of preconceived notions about the actual definition of sex trafficking.

I found myself entranced by one interview in particular - it was with a sex trafficking victim named, Wendy.  She was arrested along with an entire trafficking operation, including the pimp, after being a victim of slavery for 14 years. In the interview she also discussed the process of being picked up and dropped off by clients. She would check for weapons and hope they weren’t murderers (originally I wrote rapists as well, but in point of fact they are all rapists.) She spoke about her experience in such a matter-of-fact way. Like you or I would recount going to the store to buy bread. Her story caught me off guard.  I guess I had shielded my mind to keep these women one step away from reality. To me, these girls (and boys), these victims, had been like coma patients. Like somehow they had been asleep until they were rescued and suddenly they began to exist again. But this was her life, this was her reality.

Prior to watching the footage, I had my docushort completely "planned" out. But then I lost myself for a moment; her truth brought me grief. I contemplated my folly in pre-deciding what the final visual product of my 30 second docushort would be before I had a chance to truly hear from the victims themselves. How pompous of me to think I knew their story best. With that in mind, I pushed all of my past ideas aside and simply listened to this woman’s tragic tale. Her words flooded my mind with ideas, but none of them seemed broad enough. Then she led me to the best sound bite of all. She never wanted to be there. She was manipulated like all the other girls, molested like all the other girls, threatened like all the other girls. She was simply stating her piece of universal truth. Here was the story I would tell, and how poignant it was!

But. . .


Do we really need to make people "aware" that a prostitute does not want to be there? Do we really need to inform people that prostitutes are more often than not a victim of sex trafficking?

Yes.  Yes we do.
 

I came to the conclusion that the only way to inspire people to do good things is to give them truth and hope that they have the desire to hear it. Your average Joe on the street would not go out of his way to cause lifelong trauma to a little girl. So we need them to know that that is exactly what they are doing when they participate in prostitution or any other form of sex trafficking. If we can catch enough eyes and ears with this article, or with the video below, or with this cause - we will change the lives of the girls enslaved by this heart breaking “business.”

It’s easy to say you are not big enough to make a difference, but the truth is every voice, every word, every person who knows is fuel to the fire. I may just be a pyromaniac, but this is one fire I would love to see rage across our continent and even the world.

Truth is the change, so take this truth and share.

Below is a rough cut of Henry's video, a final edit will be posted on theatreforchange.org: