I remember when I first read a news story about human trafficking, about 30 years ago. It was a report in the Observer and I honestly thought the paper had gone bananas. It simply couldn’t be true, could it? An actual modern-day trade in people, where they’re effectively kidnapped, brought to other countries, their papers taken from them, forced to work at dangerous jobs in terrible conditions. I really thought a conspiracy theory had the reporters in its grip.
I miss the days when it was possible to be so ignorant. So unaware of the depths of depravity to which humankind will sink if there’s a buck in it for them. From the vantage point of 2024, when there are an estimated 40 million adult and child victims of such exploitation (for labour, for sex, for both), they count as halcyon days.
