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"Reported relentlessly and told grippingly": the shocking reality of modern-day slavery
… and how Christians, anti-porn crusaders, and the Bush White House are leading the fight against it
A Crime So Monstrous
by E. Benjamin Skinner
In 2003, as a writer on assignment in Sudan for Newsweek International, E. Benjamin Skinner met his first survivor of slavery. He had first flown in under enemy radar with an evangelical Christian group purporting to buy slaves en masse with the hidden purpose of securing their freedom. Afterwards, on his own, Skinner hitched a ride on a U.N. Cessna to the frontlines of the north-south Sudanese civil war. There he met Muong Nyong. Like Skinner, Nyong was 27 at the time, and pondering what to do with the rest of his life. Unlike Skinner, he had spent the first part of that life in bondage.
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After meeting Nyong, Skinner traveled the globe to find others like him. Going undercover when necessary, Skinner infiltrated trafficking networks and slave quarries, urban child markets and illegal brothels in such places as Haiti, Sudan, India, Eastern Europe, The Netherlands, and, yes, even suburban America. Now, in A Crime So Monstrous, Skinner tells the story, in gripping narrative style, of individuals who live in slavery, those who have
escaped from bondage, and those who own or traffic in slaves. He also immerses us in the political and flesh-and-blood battles on the front lines of an
unheralded new Christian abolitionist movement led by the Bush Administration’s "anti-slavery czar," John Miller -- a modern-day William Wilberforce.
From mega-harems in Dubai to illicit brothels in Bucharest, from slave quarries in India to child markets in Haiti, Skinner explores the underside of
a world we scarcely recognize as our own -- laying bare a parallel universe where human beings are bought, sold, used, and discarded. As Skinner documents
in detail, there are more slaves in the world today than ever before in history. A century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation, hundreds of
thousands of people are chattel across Africa. Millions languish in generational "debt bondage" on the Indian subcontinent. Across the globe, women and children, sold for sex and labor, are already the second most lucrative commodity for organized crime.
At the heart of the story are the slaves themselves, whose humanity Skinner lays bare as he spends months living and traveling with people like:
- Bill Nelson, a child slave who endured horrendous abuse in an urban Haitian household, before a daring rescue set him on a different path
- Muong Nyoung Muong, who lost his father in the Sudanese civil war, then lost his freedom when an Arab militiaman enslaved him and his mother at
gunpoint
- Tatiana, an Eastern European woman who had been enslaved to a brutal pimp in Amsterdam -– her ordeal would bring her a heartbeat from death
In bearing witness to them -- and the millions more held in the shadows –- Skinner has written one of the most morally courageous books of our time,
one that will long linger in the conscience of all who encounter it, and one that just might move the world to constructive action.
"A great public service"
"Ben Skinner has taken us deep into an underworld few of us have dared to access, never mind to confront. What he finds is heartbreaking -- men, women,
and children stripped of their identities, their freedom, and their dignity. Reported relentlessly and told grippingly, A Crime So Monstrous is the
rare book that doesn't simply expose these harms; it also explains how and why decent people inside and outside the U.S. government have averted their gaze,
and it showcases those who have devoted their lives to curtailing a shockingly prevalent crime against humanity." -- Samantha Power, Harvard University
"Ben Skinner does a great public service by exposing the massive scope of human trafficking in the world today. I appreciate his chapter on the heroic
role Ambassador John Miller played in getting the U.S. government to stand against this evil." -- U.S. Senator John McCain
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