Linda Smith, former congresswoman and founder of Shared Hope International (a global movement to end sex trafficking), says that pornography is fueling the sex trafficking industry. Many people might not know that those two things are linked.
“We need to figure out if we can find a way to make it not OK to buy pornography, not OK to fuel that sex industry, because it’s fueling the victimization of the child used in pornography, of the woman in despair used in pornography,” Smith says. “It’s spinning out to use them again in active sex and often they’re making the pornography, my girls are saying, while they’re being used.
“Most of my girls that I’ve rescued all over have talked about the pictures taken of them during the time. What do you think those pictures are taken and used for? The pornography of ordinary men sitting in this church, the pornography of ordinary men that are sitting on the bus with you or the plane.”
So Smith decided she needed to pull a group of men together to start taking action steps: She laid out her research before teenage boys, corporate heads and political figures in Washington, D.C. Smith had them listen to the FBI and the National Center for Missing Exploited Children and analyze commercial sexual exploitation in America, she says on the Pure Passion podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. Smith and the group she got together have now put together resources for people to educate themselves on the realities of this crisis and how to help.
“You can be a part of it by going on defendersUSA.org, finding out where to start today,” Smith says. “Your sons, your grandsons, yourself—you’re not outside of the temptation. [On] defendersUSA.org, there’s a connection for women. So many women are wives and mothers that have been hurt by this, or they know they have to do something themselves, but they don’t have a man in their lives, or they have one that is not going to work.
“You can go on and get the same protections for your family. God will honor that. We’re building a network of women supporting and helping women. … If we don’t stop [porn addictions], we’re not going to have very many young men [for whom] the sexual norm is anything other than pornographic images they’ve seen. Then, young wives are going to have to have a different standard and [we’ll have] broken marriages by the millions.”
To listen to more insight into how to help rescue people out of the trafficking and porn industries, click here for the entire episode.
