Group Uses Bars of Soap to Fight Traffickers, Rescue Sex Slaves: Here's How They Do It
This special "soap" not only cleanses but also saves lives. And there's no magic here, just plain dedication to the mission of saving girls from sex traffickers.
The group is called Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution, or S.O.A.P., according to CBN News.
It's no coincidence that this group actually uses soap, lots and lots of soap bars, to fight human trafficking, considered as the third most lucrative criminal activities in the world, next only to cross-border organized crime (worth about $2.1 trillion per year) and drug trafficking (with an estimated annual value of $320 billion), as per records of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
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Sexual exploitation is the most common form of human trafficking, which the U.N. agency calls "one of the world's most shameful crimes."
The latest estimates of the International Labor Organization placed the number of victims of human trafficking at 2.4 million, with annual criminal profits of about $32 billion, according to CNBC.
As part of the S.O.A.P. campaign against sex traffickers, the group recently gathered its volunteers in Arlington, Virginia to pack bags with bars of soap that have the number of the National Human Trafficking Hotline on the wrapper. They later delivered these bags to hotels and motels around the D.C. Metro area.
The printed message on the wrapper says, "Are you being forced to do anything you do not want to do? Have you been threatened if you try to leave? Have you witnessed young girls being prostituted? If so, please call: 1-888-3737-888 – National Human Trafficking Hotline."
Their strategy is proving to be effective.
S.O.A.P. founder Theresa Flores told CBN News that she recently received a text message from a sex trafficking victim who was able to read the message on the soap wrappers.
The text message Flores received read, "You are the reason I'm free. I found a bar of soap in Chicago and it gave me a reason to get out."
Barbara Amaya, a sex trafficking victim who is now leading her own campaign against this form of organized crime, is helping train the S.O.A.P. volunteers.
Amaya said children are especially vulnerable to sex traffickers.
"I was trafficked in the streets of New York from the age of 12 to 21 or 22," Amaya stated. "Not once did any one of those men ever say, 'wait a minute. Hold on. You're just too young.'"
In her testimony at the Richmond Justice Initiative website, she said, "During my time on the streets of New York, I was abused, shot, stabbed, raped, kidnapped, trafficked, beaten, addicted to drugs, jailed, and more all before I was 18 years old."
