Undercover investigator’s harrowing story

 

Daniel Walker became an undercover investigator to save women and children from being sold into sex slavery.

His mission ended in a mistake that cost him his marriage and made him question his identity.

The former detective took up a job in 2002 with a private US organisation that infiltrates brothels suspected of coercing children into prostitution.

Over the next four years his undercover work helped save hundreds of children – some as young as five – from being forced to work in brothels.

But he would never have accepted the job if he had known the toll it would take on him and his family.

“Indeed, had I glimpsed just a little of the suffering I would witness and the heartbreak I would endure, I would have fled in the other direction,” he writes in his book, God in a Brothel: An Undercover Journey in Sex Trafficking and Rescue.

Source: NZ Herald

Global development podcast: modern-day slavery in focus

A poster marking the international day of remembrance of the victims of slavery. Photograph: Rick Bajornas/UN

How far is globalised trade driving modern slavery as it increases the demand for ever-cheaper goods? Why does slavery still exist almost 150 years after most countries abolished it? And what should governments do now to tackle the trafficking and exploitation of people for profit?

Annie Kelly hears guests including: Beate Andrees, head of the programme to combat forced labour at the ILO; Romana Cacchioli, ofAnti-Slavery International;Andrew Wallis, chief executive of Unseen;Leonardo Sakamoto, who covers slavery for Reporter Brazil, and a first-hand testimony from a Chinese person who has experience trafficking.

Source: The Guardian / Podcast: The Guardian