The camera zooms in on a 12-year-old girl sitting on a metal cot and she shyly recounts her story of kidnap, rape and being sold into prostitution.
But her experiences, told in a documentary screened at UCLA Monday night, are not unique. Many children share this story.
The Polaris Project chapter at UCLA and the Media Project, organizations that aim to inform the general population about sex-slave trafficking, hosted speaker Guy Jacobson. Jacobson is a writer and producer of the new feature film “Holly” as well as two documentaries about the sex-slave trade in Cambodia.
Jacobson said he was inspired to make the film after he was confronted by 15 6-year-old girls soliciting him for sex while traveling in Cambodia in 2002. He said he hopes that through his films, people will become more educated about the reality of the sex-slave trade and how it impacts more than 2 million children worldwide.
“(Sex-slave trafficking) is not everyone in one place – like Darfur, for instance. People don’t realize how much of an epidemic this is,” Jacobson said.
Gloria Chou, co-coordinator of the Polaris Project chapter at UCLA, said that before taking a class that highlighted the sex-slavery epidemic, she did not know much about the sex-slave trade either.
“Many people choose to ignore the problem because they think that it’s so bad that there’s nothing they can do about it,” she said. “But it is very accessible and there are things you can do.”
Chou said that while many may choose to ignore human trafficking or be unaware of it, the trade is prevalent around the world, including in Los Angeles.
Don Wildy, the Los Angeles Police Department project manager of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area Task Force on Human Trafficking, works with other organizations to prevent human trafficking in Los Angeles.
“The first thing we want the public to know is that this concept of human trafficking exists. It is a real, tangible occurrence and it does exist in our neighborhoods and under our noses,” Wildy said.
Jacobson said that after making the movie, he realized he did not just want to inform the public – he wanted to make an actual impact on how governmental and non-governmental organizations deal with the sex trade.
He started the Redlight Children campaign to equip people with ways to fight sex-slave trafficking and advocate for countries to create and enforce harsher laws on sexual predators.
“(The Redlight Children campaign) is very result-oriented and it gives actual things that you can do. It doesn’t just say, ‘Go do something,’” Jacobson said. “While the laws passed may be local, the effect of those laws is global.”
Lisa Allen, director of the Media Project, stressed how important it is for youth across the country to be educated about human trafficking.
“It’s an incredibly important issue and I think (young people) have the answer,” Allen said. “They are the solution and they are the future.”
Jacobson also said he hopes the next generation will be able to combat the sources and problems that keep sex traffic flowing.
“Young people are the ones that start the revolutions,” Jacobson said. “This is an opportunity for college students to get involved and fight the biggest man-made evil in the world today.”