When the World Needs a Hero
“What if one of the pimps pulls a gun on the bus full of children? I thought as I stared at the operational diagram on the wall.”
This is not the opening of a sensational crime novel, but of a nonfiction book about the International Justice Mission, an organization of modern day heroes, dedicated to rescuing and advocating for victims of injustice.
Terrify No More is the gripping true account of how a team of investigators risked their lives to successfully close down the main industry in Svay Pak, a Cambodian village that lived off the sex trade of young children. Working with local authorities, they rescued children (some as young as five) from brothels, placing them in aftercare homes, and helped bring the perpetrators to justice.
Gary Haugen, founder of the International Justice Mission, writes, in Terrify No More, “If people thought it was ‘possible’ to rescue these kids and bring the bad guys to justice, it would have happened a long time ago.” Unfortunately, most of us have bought into the belief that nothing can be done about it.
That’s exactly when the world needs heroes, who don’t accept hopelessness as an answer.
Gary Haugen was one such person. A civil rights attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, in 1994, he was put on loan to be director of the United Nations genocide investigation in Rwanda. The experience changed his direction and goals in life. Three years later he left his safe, secure government job to found the International Justice Mission, a collection of lawyers and law enforcement officers that takes case referrals from faith-based organizations serving among the poor overseas. Since then IJM has established partner offices in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, and has operations in 13 third-world countries. It has provided training to over 13000 officers and officials in the countries where it serves, obtained 770 convictions and rescued over 18,000 people.
Terrify No More also recounts how IJM uses similar investigative techniques to rescue people from bonded slavery in factories and plantations, and establish them in homes and self-sustaining jobs, while prosecuting their former owners. The organization has investigated reports of police brutality and argued successfully in courts for victims of wrongful incarceration. It has provided legal assistance to return lands illegally seized from widows in poor countries.
There are an estimated 30 million slaves living in the world today, many of them children. Such a statistic is overwhelming, but Haugen, referencing Edmund Burke’s famous statement, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” believes that doing nothing is not an option. He writes, “I have yet to see any injustice of humankind that could not also be stopped by humankind.”
For everyone that wishes it were possible to do something to stop exploitation of the innocent, Terrify No More is an inspiring and empowering read. It is possible, and we can be part of it.
