Stopping the Horror of Child Sex Trafficking

Jennifer Shaw is a top 40 Billboard artist and author of the book, Life Not Typical: How Special Needs Parenting Changed my Faith and my Song.  Her new album entitled Someday is produced by Lifeway Christian Resources’ Producer of the Year, Paul Marino.  Someday features the song “To Be Love,” co-written by Shaw, which will be used as a theme song for Remember Nhu.  Her previous CD garnered a #3 hit song on the national Inspirational radio charts and spawned one of Lifeway’s best-selling Easter choral anthems. For more information, visit www.JenniferShaw.com.

Jennifer Shaw (R) with Nhu

I stepped off the plane that took me from Columbus, Ohio to Thailand and steadied myself for the journey I was about to take.  I was invited by Remember Nhu, an organization that exists to prevent the exploitation of children in the sex trade industry throughout the world.  Carl Ralston, the founder of Remember Nhu, took us to the PatPong district in Bangkok which is notorious for sex tourism and trafficking. I can’t even share some of the pictures I took because the language on the signage is too graphic. We started to realize the scope of the issue. Some estimate that 15% of the GDP in Thailand is from prostitution. Remember Nhu is trying to prevent children from ever being trafficked, and it was very difficult as a parent to know that there were children living behind those windows who were in slavery and being abused in ways I couldn’t begin to fathom. The children we met who were caught up in this horror were the ages of our children back home, and that just broke my heart even more.

Remember Nhu currently runs three children’s homes in Thailand, although they are moving soon and plan to open more. While we were there, there had been over 90 applications for children, not including the ones who come in from referrals through pastors and social workers and just word of mouth. They only had room to take about 10 kids. It’s a big problem, and one they hope will be rectified by the new land purchase. Another challenge is finding indigenous house parents who are Christians since the country is 97% Buddhist.

We heard a few stories of some of the children they had rescued. One had come to them by a sheer act of God’s mercy when a house parent for Remember Nhu was shopping at the market.  A couple approached her and offered to sell her their two-year-old daughter. They both had HIV and needed money for medicine. She talked them into a visit from a social worker and they signed their daughter over to R-Nhu and got medical help themselves as well. In another case, a little eighteen-month-old girl had lived for a year literally going house to house in the village begging food because her parents had both been incarcerated for running drugs. No one took her in, and finally someone told R-Nhu about her. When they brought her in, they described her as a “feral child.” She has been with them a year and is doing wonderfully now.

Many of the stories were so similar: extreme poverty, parents who had died and left their children at the mercy of other family members who could not afford to care for them, abuse, remarriage and the refusal of the new husband to care for his wife’s children.  But all I saw when we were with these children was their potential. They were amazing, and they deserved more than life had dealt them. There were a few girls in particular with whom I spent a lot of time, and they really touched my heart. 

One of the sweetest moments of the week was when I realized that we knew several of the same worship songs. I would sing in English, and they would sing in their language, all praising the same God. Many of the kids in the homes have become Christians even though this is an almost entirely Buddhist nation. Some of them spoke some English, and when I asked them why they had become Christians, they said that they had seen “love” from both sides, and that Christian love was different– it was real. That night the girls at the main house showed me a book of worship songs in Thai. Of course, I couldn’t read any of it, but the chord notations were the same, so I could play them. They thought I was brilliant, and when they realized I wasn’t actually reading the Thai, just the chords, they thought it was a great joke. I was listening to them singing praise to Jesus, and telling me that Jesus was the one who saved them, and it gave me such hope. He is our hope. And He is theirs.  

People keep asking me, “How can someone sell their own child? Who are these parents??” That is a good question. But after seeing how they live, sometimes when you are choosing between starvation for your child or selling that child, there isn’t a good choice. I would say a better question is: Who is buying these children? Why is there a market for child prostitution? And who will be there to protect these children? Being there with Remember Nhu made me aware of the need for the Christian community to step up and be God's people as we fight this terrible evil.  I wrote the song "To Be Love" to call people to act, to pray, and to invoke God's mercy for these precious kids.  If we are all working together as the hands and feet of Christ, we can change so many lives.

###

Lyrics "To Be Love"
written by Paul Marino and Jennifer Shaw

Lord give me eyes to see

A world unreal to me

Where children are not free, enslaved, abused, deprived

Help me to see their tears

Help me to feel their fears

Give me a heart that longs to try

To act justly

To show mercy

To walk humbly with You, God

To be broken

For the broken

To be willing

To be love

Make me a voice of peace

That reaches to the least

And gives the hope they need, Lord, this is my desire 

To act justly

To show mercy

To walk humbly with You, God

To be broken

For the broken

To be willing

To be love