It is almost a decade since I read the article about sex slavery on the back pages of a Melbourne newspaper. What resulted: I wrote a script and we made THE JAMMED in 2006 with some great actors and it was released in 2007 – and was very much supported by David Stratton and other reviewers. I realised then that people wanted to know – and cared, and I naively thought that the problem would ‘go away’. Astonishingly, the film is more relevant than ever – watch it here.
It turns out (coerced) sexual exploitation is still the most profitable of the forced labor businesses – and with business booming each sex slave earns a global average profit of $21, 800 for their ‘masters’. A report published by the UN’s International Labor Organization has made shocking revelations: In 2012 modern-day slaves worldwide brought in a profit of more than $150 billion for their masters. The figure is nine billion more than the estimated annual profit of the entire U.S. banking system at $141.3 billion and about $100 billion more than Google’s annual revenue. The Global Slavery Index claims that 30 million people are slaves. What the hell is going on with humanity.