Nefarious: Merchant of Souls


Nefarious: Merchant of Souls is a 2011 American documentary film about modern human trafficking, specifically sexual slavery. Presented from a Christian worldview, Nefarious covers human trafficking in the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia, alternating interviews with re-enactments. Victims of trafficking talk about having been the objects of physical abuse and attempted murder. Several former prostitutes talk about their conversion to Christianity, escape from sexual oppression, and subsequent education or marriage. The film ends with the assertion that only Jesus can completely heal people from the horrors of sexual slavery.
Nefarious was written, directed, produced and narrated by Benjamin Nolot, founder and president of Exodus Cry, the film's distributor. Nolot, who travelled to 19 countries to collect the film's content, said that the purpose of the film is "to draw people's attention to the issue, but also to inspire them in terms of what they can be doing … to take a stand against this injustice." The film was officially released on July 27, 2011, with individual grassroots screenings also taking place. Laila Mickelwait, Exodus Cry's director of awareness and prevention, screened the film in several countries in an attempt to persuade governments to make laws similar to Sweden's Sex Purchase Act, which criminalizes the purchasing rather than the selling of sex. The film was released on home video on May 1, 2012.
Interviewees in the film include Canadian journalist Victor Malarek, Jerusalem Institute of Justice founder Calev Myers, Christian therapist Dan Allender, clinical psychologist Melissa Farley, Piet Keesman, Baptist missionary Lauran Bethell, Agape International Missions founder Don Brewster, anti-trafficking activist Helen Sworn, former prostitute Annie Lobert, and Swedish detective superintendent Kajsa Wahlberg. Ted Baehr of Movieguide, a Christian magazine, called the film "a powerful, compelling and transformational documentary about human trafficking and sex slavery" and commented that it covered the inherently sexual subject matter candidly without displaying nudity. Dan Preston of Godculture Magazine praised Nolot's writing and directing. Nefarious has won film awards, including the Honolulu Film Award for best screenplay, the Urban Mediamakers Film Festival best documentary feature award, and the Indie Fest feature documentary award of excellence.

Themes

Nefarious: Merchant of Souls documents modern human trafficking, specifically sexual slavery. While there are men and boys who are trafficked around the world, the United States Department of State estimates that about 80% of human trafficking victims are female, and the film focuses on them. Information is presented from a Christian worldview—despite the subject matter, there is no profanity or nudity in the film, although there are scenes showing alcohol consumption and women wearing skimpy clothing.
Nefarious explores how sex trafficking differs from country to country, and suggests that all the victims are both psychologically and emotionally enslaved. One of the initial assertions in the film is that slavery has not been abolished but is increasing, and that half of this slavery is sexual in nature. Nefarious identifies political corruption and difficult socioeconomic situations as elements that prevent sex slaves from escaping exploitation, and suggests that most victims do not survive for more than seven years after initially being trafficked. While the violent acquisition of sex slaves depicted in the first sequence of the film does occur in reality, Jimmy Stewart of Charisma wrote that most girls who are sexually trafficked in Europe are recruited through a fraudulent offer of employment and an improved lifestyle overseas, neither of which ultimately materializes in the new country.
Nefarious asserts that there is a link between the international sex industry and legal prostitution in the Western world, and that those who create the demand for forced prostitution around the world are of a wide variety of ages and are often considered respectable. The film contrasts the secretiveness and brutality of the sex industry in Eastern Europe with the openness of public prostitution in the Netherlands. Nefarious suggests that sex trafficking in Southeast Asia is fuelled largely by the complicity of the victims' parents, with many in Cambodia grooming and then knowingly selling their daughters into prostitution to pay for luxury goods. The film asserts that 10% of the population of Moldova has been sexually trafficked. Nefarious contrasts Las Vegas prostitutes with victims of sex trafficking in Europe, depicting the former as drawn into the sex industry by dreams of a glamorous lifestyle, and the latter as made vulnerable by child abandonment and orphanages.
The film presents human trafficking statistics and assertions from a variety of sources, prominently departments of the United States government and the United Nations. These include that human trafficking is growing faster than any other criminal industry, that the average age of those forced into prostitution in the U.S. is 13, that the commercial sexual exploitation of children victimizes almost two million children globally, that 80% of trafficked women and 50% of trafficked children are sexually exploited, that 161 UN member states engage in human trafficking, and that modern slavery has an annual revenue of —according to the film, higher than the annual revenues of Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League and the National Hockey League combined. The film indicates that "trafficking is an exploitation of vulnerability" and expresses the need to "take away the stigma that choose to be there." Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves is quoted as saying that there are 27 million slaves in the world. The film ends with the assertion that only Jesus can free people from sexual slavery.

Contents

Re-enactments and live footage

Nefarious covers human trafficking in the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia. Interviews are interspersed with re-enactments. The film opens with a re-enactment of a girl being kidnapped by organized criminals. She is confined with other girls in a dark room, lit by a flickering lightbulb. Men order the girls to remove their clothes, and then examine them and shout commands and threats at them, causing them to cry from fear. One girl is dragged into another room. A victim of ordeals such as these, speaking in voiceover, explains that, in this situation, girls are often taken into a separate room to have their sexual performance tested. Identifying these events as taking place near Belgrade, Serbia, the film then tracks the fictional girls through Croatia to Amsterdam's red-light district De Wallen, and to sex markets in Berlin and Las Vegas. The film states that this slavery goes unnoticed in cities where prostitution is legal. Slaves are depicted in confinement, at their places of work, and as they are sold. Many of the girls are orphans, and all are either kidnapped or tricked into forced prostitution. Traffickers in the film use hard drugs, brainwashing and sexual and physical abuse to keep the girls under control.
One of the scenes in Southeast Asia takes place near a karaoke club, and depicts groups of girls, apparently ranging in age from early to late teens, offering sexual services to customers. Benjamin Nolot interviews a police officer, who says that the bar's owner recently bought eight other similar clubs and controls around 2,000 girls. Another Southeast Asian scene shows Nolot and his crew chasing an American man out of a town where he was trying to purchase sex with a child.

Interviews

The interviewees in Nefarious include former traffickers, international humanitarian workers, social workers, psychologists, human rights experts, and former victims of human trafficking. Interviewees include Canadian journalist Victor Malarek, Jerusalem Institute of Justice founder Calev Myers, Christian therapist Dan Allender, clinical psychologist Melissa Farley, Amsterdam police official Piet Keesman, Baptist missionary Lauran Bethell, Agape International Missions founder Don Brewster, anti-trafficking activist Helen Sworn, former prostitute Annie Lobert, and Swedish Detective Superintendent Kajsa Wahlberg.
The film includes an interview with a man referring to himself as "Vlad", who formerly trafficked in humans and drugs in Europe for eleven years. Vlad explains that traffickers control their victims by drugging them, physically abusing them, or threatening to abuse them. He claims that traffickers consider themselves most successful when the exploited girls start responding immediately to shouted, one-word commands. Vlad describes beating girls who tried to run away and says that he felt little remorse after such incidents; the large sums of money involved made him indifferent to the girls' fate. Vlad surmises that the reason global sex trafficking has expanded is that girls can be sold for sex repeatedly, while drugs can only be sold once. When asked how sex trafficking can function on an international scale, Vlad states that the two major contributory factors are organized crime and political corruption.
Another interview features an Amsterdam pimp, "Slim", who owns a business allowing passers-by to view scantily clad girls in a display window; they can have sex with them on a mattress in a back room. He initially says that the display window women are not in any danger while with a client in the back room, but later clarifies that the girls should "keep a hand close to the panic button" located on the wall. When asked by Nolot if these activities are financed by organized crime, Slim hesitates, then says no.
A female human trafficking victim is interviewed with her face hidden. She describes how she and other human trafficking victims in Eastern Europe were held in buildings with security cameras, where they were forced to walk naked down a runway before a group of men who watched under the guise of attending a fashion show. She then describes being auctioned off to the audience members, who she says examined her off the runway as one might examine cattle.
A 55-year-old woman from England tells the story of how she was first prostituted in Boscombe, near Bournemouth in Dorset, after being raped as a child in the council houses where she grew up. She describes running away, being raped again at the age of 13 and then being locked in a wardrobe in Manchester, and says that she found this situation normal at the time as it was the only life she knew. She eventually became addicted to heroin. She then describes a vision of Jesus that she says gave her the strength to escape sexual trafficking at the age of 40 and heroin six years later. Other victims of trafficking speak about having been the objects of physical abuse and attempted murder. Nevada prostitutes describe having gone into prostitution in Las Vegas after watching the film Pretty Woman. Several former prostitutes talk about their conversion to Christianity, escape from sexual oppression, and subsequent education or marriage. Some of them cry while telling their stories. Lobert calls prostitution "the greatest acting job", explaining that prostitutes have to constantly feign enjoyment while actually feeling none. Before Nefarious was completed, one of the former prostitutes interviewed for the film returned to prostitution, a fact acknowledged in the film.
In her interview, Swedish Detective Superintendent Kajsa Wahlberg describes purchasing sex from a prostitute as paying to masturbate into someone. The leader of an organization working to rescue girls from prostitution in Cambodia says that it is not the poorest parents who sell their children into sexual slavery but rather the parents who are looking to buy luxury goods. He therefore argues that sex trafficking is a spiritual and moral issue that cannot be solved by education or money. In another interview, a man purchasing sex in Thailand says that he believes the girls are happy to be working as prostitutes. Another interview features an American man who had been a sex tourist in Asia.