Mira Sorvino Exposes Shocking Truths About Human Trafficking and 'Sound of Freedom'

foreign [Music] felt good you have been at this for 12 years I've been working against human trafficking since 2004 first with Amnesty International as they stop obviously it's when the campaign spokesperson where I first learned about modern slavery and was horrified that it was this you know 250 thousand dollar a year industry that now claims 40 million victims a year and over 70 percent of them are women and girls and two million of them are children sexually trafficked um and less than quite four percent of them get out so over 99 of them are stuck in slavery and and that just to me is just mind-boggling that we are allowing on our watch people to live in this horrendously exploited way whether it's labor trafficking or sex trafficking and of course the worst is child sex trafficking which this film addresses but um Tim and I don't remember how we met we met because our past crossed through human trafficking I mean because it's sort of not that big of a circle the people who work on this full-time and in 2009 the UN asked me to become their Goodwill Ambassador for unmbc or an office on drugs and crime on human trafficking and I've been doing that ever since and it's one of the greatest honors and challenges of my life but I always admired Tim and and um you know thought his commitment to helping children was just extraordinary I just have to convince Pablo okay so you quit your job and you go and rescue those kids they haven't gotten better and there's more people in drafting now than they were 10 years ago there's maybe more arrests more convictions but the the number of people living in bondage is it's growing and games are taking on human trafficking as a better option to drug selling because you can sell a person over and over and over again and very young gang members are trafficking you know tween girl suit you know are recruited through social media and uh then copper Rod has gotten on them and and they're threatened that they're going to be exposed online if they if they tell or if they try and leave and uh this is happening in Middle Schools Across America I mean this is it's insane like you know when we talk about sex trafficking of minors in America our domestic minor sex trafficking is mostly populated by American citizen kids you know so the problem is right here it's all over the glove and it's right here the United States is a huge consumer of commercial sex um you know and they're a huge consumer for online child abuse material so we all call it online child porn we call it you know videoed child abuse I mean you're watching children be hurt and that and we're a gigantic consumer for that which is just horrific like just disgusting and awful I'm walking into a room right now hanging up to bed why won't we do how has things changed I think that there's more awareness I don't see that tidal ways of action that needs to happen if we are going to address this from a multi-prong human rights base approach that goes towards prevention goes towards ending the impunity the traffickers currently enjoy and goes towards uh Rehabilitation for those people who have been exited from trafficking either by their own accord or buy some rescue me like Tim does in the film and uh all three are necessary because you can't just continue to do triage you can't just okay we've pulled some people out of it we're going to give them some help I actually have to stop it before it happens you have to address the the root causes in this country so the root causes or child sex trafficking are the failed foster care system um abuse at home a lack of access to good education um you know basically uh lgbtqia children not getting the support they need so they run away and then as soon as a person runs away from home within 42 hours their proposition for survival sex which was a kind of trafficking um you know so we we have a lot of factors here that contribute to it probably the biggest factor is that people buy commercial sex not everybody who buys child sex is a pedophile sometimes this is like an opportunistic situation where it's on the menu so then the customer is like I haven't tried that and a lot of people who are habitual commercial sex buyers are sex addicts and there is just like with other addictions there's parts of the brain that kind of fire up when they have an experience that that meets the criteria that addiction and with sex addiction the over time that high starts to wear off from the same kinds of experience and people go further and further to try and Chase that original high that they used to get from you know simple pornography and simple sex acts with an adult they will go further and try and pursue underage people because that's different that fires up that that section that hasn't been tried yet they will watch more violent videos or God forbid that you know people pay people online to hurt children you know this has um so yeah I think that things have not gotten better except that there is a general awareness of human trafficking but I don't think there's been this heart and head change across the globe that every man and woman has to have to really make a shift where we're all up in arms and saying slavery in our time the destruction of lives the the the torture and cruelty and rape of children like we can't we can't section this let's ride us up and all work together to solve this and and that hasn't happened and I think it might be because you know trafficking survivors who are exited from that life our small group and they're not a constituency and no politician is worried about getting their vote because they're just generally underground you know we don't see them we don't hear from them generally although there's some fantastic Survivor leaders but they're not out there in large numbers and nobody's worried about their vote so you know it's sort of the squeaky wheel guess the grease and we all have to now be that squeaking wheel together with them and say like okay enough is enough we say you know end it now um so yeah so that's sort of what I'm hoping that this film contributes to is a global heart head cheese because I think you're really gonna fall in love with the children featured in this movie they're such beautiful souls and there's good actors these kids like and then you feel like you're watching real people not child actors who are being you know goosed into a performance or you know are just reading lines they're they're so Soulful and so and empathetic like and you you see your own children in them you know you see I mean I'm a mother of four if you see your own children in the minute how not stand what they have to go through and then there is this beautiful Ray of Hope in the film that you know we can help these children exit the situation on a global level and that's what I'm hoping that this film starts to accomplish is that people their insides are engaged because this is high art I really felt that the movie is beautiful it's so beautifully done beautifully acted beautifully shot I have a very small part in it so don't expect to see a lot of me in it but with the overall movie is high art and I think it really works on this gut level that you're going to be pulled in and drawn into the story you might cry and then you might feel inspired to take action yourself that's what has to happen because we have to go from awareness General sort of apathetic awareness to very engaged commitment to action to end this somebody brought Nana into this country somebody probably had her turning 20 tricks a day when she should have been going to the junior prom I want to nail the pig who did this I I know I did human trafficking the mini series which was basically the first uh the Hearst large scale project done about him trafficking with Niles Sutherland um we did it for Lifetime but it got nominated for Golden Globes and enemies and um it was kind of a big deal and it was my you know I I was offered it right after I started working with amnesty and I had them vet the script to see if it was accurate and respectful and they said actually we pretty much got it right and he saw it exploitative and yeah they gave me the thumbs up and then when promoting that film I decided I needed to meet survivors and I met the first two of many many over the years that I've interviewed since then um but they blew me away there were two women who had been trafficked in California in from Latin America and uh one was Labor Chapel together was Labor and sex Trafford and their stories were so horrific I could not I I could not believe that people were treating other human beings this way and they were doing it in this country and um one of them said to one of them she said you in this country you're lower than the Daw uh you know in this country they have all these kinds of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals nobody here cares about you and then another the other one uh who was in sheep that one was Labor trafficked into a sweatshop like you know seamstress Sweatshop and the other one was trafficked as a 16 year old into a domestic servant situation she was tricked into you know she was told oh you could get this job you can surprise her family with money and and as soon as she entered the home the guy like took her and made her his you know sexual slave and he was witch and he was threatening evil uh dealings on her family that he would kill her brother remotely and had her just absolutely terrified and at a certain point she said she felt so low that she considered taking her own life but she felt that what she was doing was keeping her brother alive so she persisted in staying his servant his slave so that she could keep her brother alive and she said that was all I had left to give in this world and it was so sad because he psychologically manipulated her into being complicit in her own staying in the situation because he had her so frightened that he was going to hurt her family and that's the number one Leverage The traffickers use is harm to the family harm to themselves um and these two women changed my life forever I just felt like I my eyes had been opened and now I could not look away and so I just became much more involved in the theme and then you know started working with the UN on it in 2009 they saw the work I was doing I didn't mean to be a girl Ambassador and I'd been doing that ever since and it's been like an enormous part of my life oh okay everybody come on gotta clear your place now we're gonna be late let's go come on well I think that people should know look look I'm gonna give you that this has like a spielbergian ending it's not like I was involved in a holocaust movie that was the darkest holocaust movie of all time nobody lives except for the one Nazi all the Jewish people in the crematorium working in the Korean John they all die all the rebels who help Lord Auschwitz all die okay so that's the kind of movie that like I now would be like it sounds fascinating I'm afraid of it this story although definitely a strong topic that is it is you know a challenge to face there is such beauty in this story there is redemption there is heroism there is reunion this story has a happy ending so I think it's really important to say that you're gonna go to this film and feel somewhat uplifted by the example of what is possible in the human Spirit what is possible through people who are brave and enough to confront something that is truly evil and you know parents who never give up loving your children children who never give up their own Inner Strength their own Inner Light and that once exited from their situations can really slowly rebound and flower and live the life that they were intended for by God not not this terrible terrible life that was voiced upon them so I think this is an inspirational movie and it does have a happy ending you know so I I think I think we want to tell people that like I'm not I know it's a spoiler but I don't want you to think that you're going to go on there in the end of it you're just going to want to shoot yourself in the head I'm sorry I didn't you know that may be trigger warning but you know some movies make you feel so dark and this movie I think takes you on a journey through something dark but leads you into the light foreign [Music]

Channel: iHollywoodTV

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Id: 9gPcQ6amxpc

Length: 14min 39sec (879 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2023