BITAHR 2012 Film Forum: Fighting Trafficking Through Film (Modern Theater-Boston, MA)
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The Boston Initiative to Advance Human Rights (BITAHR) is happy to announce its 2nd Annual film forum, “Fighting Trafficking Through Film”!
Monica was only 15 when she was sold into prostitution. Waiting for the school bus on a typicalfall afternoon, she was kidnapped by a young Dorchester man. This man raped Monica repeatedly and then sold her for sex. She was only 15 when she was held against her will. She was only 15 when she was beaten, raped, and sold to hoards of men day and night. When Monica was only 15 she was brave enough to flee her captor. At the end of this excruciatingly painful ordeal, Monica clung to life while her captor, walked away with her innocence and more than $20,000 in cash.
Monica is not alone…
-In the U.S., the average age of a child exploited in the sex trade is 12-14 years old—the 6th grade.
-Experts estimate that as many as 300,000 girls in the U.S. are at risk of sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.
-Globally there are at least 27 million people held as slaves.
-79% of those trafficked into modern-day slavery are exploited in the commercial sex trade.
BITAHR is committed to changing the way these stories are portrayed. Stories like Monica’s have traditionally been told through hushed whispers and behind closed doors. This legacy of silence inspired BITHAR’s next project -- to expose the stories of sex trafficking through the world’s most powerful medium... film.
When we temporarily sacrifice our own daily struggles to imagine the pain, shame, isolation and hopelessness of another, we experience the kind of empathy that allows us to act.
BITAHR will host its 2nd Annual Film Forum, a groundbreaking three-day conference featuring domestic and international films exposing sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation as a human rights violation. Screenings will be followed by expert panels with diverse backgrounds and expertise. BITAHR will empower attendees to return to their communities with a keen sense of duty, energized to eradicate human trafficking and supplied with the knowledge and tools to become modern day abolitionists.
