Ayushi Agarwal
JWB Blogger
“Sold”: What Happens When A 13-Year-Old Girl Gets Sold To A Brothel
- JWB Post
- March 28, 2016
Fact: Across the globe, about 20 million people are bought, sold and exploited for the sex trade and forced labor, according to Equality Now.
Human trafficking is yet another evil that has been posing as a threat to the civility of our society. It takes place behind closed doors in dingy colonies.
“Sold,” a new film, hopes to highlight this pressing issue through the movie screens.
“Sold,” based on the bestselling novel of the same title by Patricia McCormick, takes into account the typical horrors human trafficking victims face and folds them into the story about Lakshmi, a 13-year-old unwittingly sold into prostitution.
The Nepalese girl is told that she’s going to work as a domestic servant in Kolkata, India, a job she’s eager to take on in order to help her struggling family, and buy them a tin roof. But once she arrives, Lakshmi learns that she’s been sold to a brothel, Happiness House, and will remain there until she works off her father’s debt.
The issue of human trafficking is of particular concern in Nepal where about 7,000 to 15,000 girls and young women are trafficked each year into Indian brothels, Gordon Brown, former U.K. Prime Minister, wrote in a HuffPost blog post last year. Experts feared that those already-concerning figures would spike last year after the Nepal earthquake, which left 950,000 children living in tents.
Traffickers were slated to make $570 of each child they supplied.
“Sold” has partnered with some nonprofits, including ECPAT, Save the Children, World Vision and United Way, and is raising funds for a number of initiatives. It’s supporting Hope House and other safe houses for children of sex workers and sex trafficking survivors. It’s working to build schools in Nepal and promote healing programs. And it’s urging supporters to get involved by sharing information about the film on social media.
“I really wanted to do something with a film where real children could be affected and helped,” director Jeffrey D. Brown told TakePart.
In addition to informing the public about the realities of human trafficking, the film also hopes to foment viewers into taking action.
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