By Matt Weafer
David says he's 10 years old.
His caretakers say he's probably only seven or eight.
No one knows for certain.
David is an orphan in East Asia, and Pastor Brian Gibson of River City Church and a few members of his congregation took a missionary trip to the orphanage in February. While they were there, they took some of the kids to a carnival.
David laughed, played and ate cotton candy like any young boy.
But just six days before that, he was a house slave in Burma, probably sold by his family for around $20 with the hope that he would have a better life than his parents.
His story is a common one among children in East Asia; the difference is that David was rescued. Most of these children remain house slaves, sex slaves or prostitutes for the rest of their lives, which are usually cut short from AIDs, malnutrition or murder.
Gibson, his wife Jessica Gibson, Bill Mayfield and Ryan Staples spent 10 days in Thailand with Lana, the founder of Life Impact International. For Lana's safety, we cannot publish her last name. Corruption runs rampant in the area and rescuing children from slavery makes Lana an enemy to the slave trade. "Their butts are on the line," Gibson said.
Gibson and his crew's mission was to learn more about the tragedies of the area—genocide, severe poverty, slavery, and other destitution—and to film a documentary for Life Impact.
Around 900,000 to one million people are sold into slavery a year, Gibson said. "The sex traffic industry—illegal slave trade—it makes more money than any corporation you can think of in a year."
And while slaves are captured or purchased from all over the globe, a majority of them are children sold by desperate parents hoping they will not only provide their children a better future but also to have one less mouth to worry about feeding each day.
In the documentary, Lana said that most of these parents don't know that they are condemning their children to a lifetime of torture and degradation. Slave traders tell parents that the children will sell flowers, go to school and learn a trade.
They do sell flowers initially as the first phase of breaking the child's spirit. In the second phase, the slave traders, molest, beat and starve the children—just like taming a wild horse—to remove their desire for freedom, their ability to question authority, and their hope for a decent life, transforming them into complacent robots obeying instructions until set free, usually by death.
The four missionaries spent their time getting to know the rescued children and touring the area to see how Americans—Owensboroans, specifically—can help.
Little David was still acclimating himself to a life outside of forced labor and destitution. David suffered from malnutrition; his stomach had swollen and he had to visit the hospital every three days for blood transfusions. However, his owners forced him to walk the two miles there and back.
While Gibson and his crew spent time with David, they took him to a restaurant.
"This was the first restaurant he'd ever been to," Gibson said. "We took him to a nice restaurant, which was something else for him. He thought we were kings."
While at the restaurant, Gibson took him to the restroom. "He goes to the bathroom and tries to wash his hands in the urinal," he said.
Staples said, "They have fish ponds in the restaurant and he's reaching in trying to catch fish. Then he's gone for a minute and he comes back with a lizard."
"The girls are like look he's got a lizard as a pet," Gibson said. "And I'm like I don' think that's a pet. He's got a rock and he's going to cut its belly open and eat it. He's a scrapper. He's learned to take care of himself."
Not all of the children were that lucky. Gibson said when they walked through the red light district, they were approached by pimps pointing to prostitutes standing emotionless in windows and doorways. "There were signs listing prices for different sex acts and types of prostitutes," he said.
"The average age of a prostitute is 14," Gibson said, "and they'll have to sleep with up to 20 people a day. Stats are one in 10 people in Thailand are HIV positive. So, you're sold as a slave, and you have to sleep with 20 people a day when you're a young teenager. It's a death sentence. You're going to die of AIDs."
A popular myth in Asia and Africa, he said, is that sleeping with virgins will cure you of AIDs.
Once a prostitute becomes too sick, pimps will send them to border villages to die.
"The people are so uneducated," Gibson said, "packs of kids will come by and rape them, and then those kids get AIDs."
"Lots of Chinese businessmen come to Thailand," he said. "They hold a belief that the younger a child you sleep with, the more blessing it brings on your business. There are even doctors in Bangkok that will take a one or two-year-old baby and perform surgery on it to make it possible for a male to have intercourse."
A number of variables combined to create this horrifying environment, including government corruption, genocide, poverty and greed.
The influx of Burmese refugees into the area has drastically affected the number of impoverished families in the area. And local residents discriminate against the culture of the Burmese people, known as the Karen.
Nearly 50,000 registered Burmese refugees live on a four-square-mile refugee camp along with at least 30,000 unregistered refugees. Gibson said Burmese dictators have terrorized the Karen by pillaging villages, kidnapping children, raping women and forcing young boys into the military. The government and drug dealers also sell Yabba, a version of crank, at half price to the Karen to help destroy their culture.
"These Burmese people are all over Thailand and they see them as a problem," Gibson said. "So the Thai people exploit them: sell kids to the sex trade; hire them, work them for three months, and not want to pay them, so they kill them, put them in the river. And nobody cares. It's just another dead Karen."
Tens of thousands of impoverished families struggle to find food each day and the culture and local government support—or at least don't attempt to impede in the—exploitation of the lowest class in East Asia.
The Life Impact Web site, www.lifeimpactintl.org, says, "In India, a buffalo costs $350 . . . and a child costs $12." The Web site also says more than 165 million children between five and 14 are involved in some kind of forced labor.
Lana and Life Impact are working to rescue children, educate parents and help families work toward a sustainable living.
River City Church will be sending another group of missionaries to the region soon to teach trades and help educate workers in the orphanage on how to properly care for young children.
One of the best ways for Owensboro residents to offer assistance is through donations. Visit www.lifeimpactintl.org.
A Web-friendly version of the documentary composed by Staples will be available on Life Impact's Web site. River City Church will also host another viewing of the full documentary in the future.
"We live in the safest place on Earth, and so many of us don't even know it," Gibson said. "We don't realize how much we can really accomplish."
"I got back and just realized how many of my friends just hang out at Starbucks," Staples said. "There's so much more you can do, so much more rewarding than being insular."
One of the most noticeable things that Staples noticed upon his return was "how ethnocentric a group of people we are in this region—really in America—how insular we are and not in a horrible neglectful kind of way. It's just people don't think about the other side of the world. You hear about it but it seems like trendy causes. Let's wear a wrist band or listen to Bono talk about AIDs, but no one really thinks about it until you go see it."
"It's not that they're bad people," Gibson said. "It's just that they've never seen it."
Gibson and Staples both said their most memorable experiences of the trip were with David, who is now healthy and happy along with more than 50 other children Life Impact has rescued.
