A LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE

Victims of sex trafficking fight for freedom with the help of Christian compassion in this nonfiction work.

Filmmaker, journalist, and anti-trafficking activist Yu Friedman recounts her investigation into coerced sex work across eastern Asia. She tells of the danger she encountered while filming seedy storefront bordellos on a 2012 trip to the Chinese province of Yunnan and revisits the Korean women forced into sex work during World War II, about whom she wrote in Silenced No More (2015). She interviews North Korean women who were driven by starvation to immigrate to China and then sold as brides to farmers; talks to Hong Kong nightclub hostesses who toil to pay off debts to traffickers; and tells of preteen Cambodian children in Thailand, driven into sex slavery. Somber patterns emerge from the stories: Impoverished women are lured from home by false promises of high-paying jobs and then imprisoned by traffickers, who beat and rape them until they submit to forced sex work; many struggle with addiction and have unwanted children, and a lack of education and a victim-blaming culture leave them with few options. But Yu Friedman finds inspiration in Christian groups such as Door of Hope, which offers counseling, shelter, and job training to women trying to break free. Her narrative sometimes takes a melodramatic tone—“I felt a sense of dread and oppressive danger looking out at this pit of hell,” she writes of one red-light district—and is often framed around redemption arcs that culminate in turns toward God; one describes a Chinese crime boss who embraced Christianity and shuttered his brothel after an angel visited him in a dream. But her reportage is sympathetic and perceptive, and her prose is often evocative: “When I first met Kat, she was bright-eyed and cried easily at the thought of entertaining men. A few months later, she was emaciated, her skin had turned sallow, her long jet-black hair was limp and greasy, and her eyes had the wide-eyed bloodshot look of a regular drug user.” The result is a revealing look at a shocking humanitarian crisis.

A searing but ultimately hopeful indictment of sexual exploitation.