Free A Child

Yesterday I read an article in City Weekly titled Suffer the Children. This article is about David Race Bannon and FreeAChild.org. David Race Bannon (author of Race Against Evil: The Secret Missions of the Interpol Agent Who Tracked the World's Most Sinister Criminals) was a member of Archangel, a covert team within Interpol (the largest intelligence and law-enforcement organization in the world), where he worked as a "cleaner" (assassin). His job was to hunt down and punish those who raped, tortured and killed children for profit. FreeAChild.org is a nonprofit organization located in Boulder, CO whose mission is to rescue and protect children from child trafficking and child prostitution.

The child sex trade is an issue that most people don't want to think about, but it is real. Read some statistics here. In his Address to the UN General Assembly, on Sept. 23rd, 2003, President George W. Bush said:

"Each year, an estimated 800-900,000 human beings are bought, sold, or forced across the world's borders. Among them are hundreds of thousands of teenage girls,and others as young as five, who fall victim to the sex trade. There is a special in the evil in the abuse and exploitation of the most innocent and vulnerable. The trade in human beings for any purpose must not be allowed to thrive in our time."

If you want to help stop this tragedy, here's how:

• Contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for tips on how you can keep your children safe from molesters and traffickers. Call 1-800-THE-LOST, or go to www.missingkids.org.
• Contact Free a Child at 720-890-1457 to volunteer or for more information about The Butterfly Project. Learn more about their programs and child trafficking at www.freeachild.org.
• Send tax-deductible donations to Free a Child at P.O. Box 4203, Boulder, CO 80306-4203.
• Write to your representatives and ask them to support legislation that holds traffickers accountable and that places sanctions on nations that do not have or do not enforce laws against sex slavery and the trafficking of human beings.
• Report collectors and sellers of child pornography to your local police. This is not a victimless crime.
• Urge your state lawmakers to make trafficking and child pornography a priority for state and local law-enforcement agencies.
• Become informed, and then work to inform others.