Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/04/20/3901093/keller-church-fighting-human-trafficking.html#storylink=cpy
Posted Friday, Apr. 20, 2012
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/04/20/3901093/keller-church-fighting-human-trafficking.html#storylink=cpyMembers of Milestone Church in Keller are raising their voices and pounding the pavement on behalf of women and children throughout the world who have been silenced.
"God wants people who have voices to raise them for those who don't," church member Gabrielle Chesnut said.
"Basically, they're in slavery. They're scared and don't know how to get out without being hurt or their families being hurt."
Chesnut organized today's Stop the Traffick: Fun Run/5K, which benefits the A21 Campaign, an international organization devoted to abolishing human trafficking.
The 4,000-member church wants to do its part to stop human trafficking, said Milestone's missions director, Stacey Hatcher.
"I saw a video about it and was shocked at the magnitude," she said. "These are humans who are actually sold into slavery."
Many Scriptures tell Christians to care about such people, Chesnut said.
"I think about the greatest commandments -- to love God with all your heart, your soul and your mind and to love your neighbor as yourself," Chesnut said.
"When we care about the things God cares about, we have to care about people, because he cares about people."
Milestone's run is also intended to make people aware that the crime isn't restricted to Third World countries, Hatcher said.
"You always think about it being a problem in Thailand and Eastern Europe," she said. "Because of our border with Mexico, human trafficking happens in Texas, too."
The problem isn't just a border issue, either, said Carl Rusnok, a North Texas regional spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"People are basically kidnapped and forced to work in fields, in factories and in brothels," he said. "They can be kidnapped locally and bused to Houston to be prostitutes."
When the Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force was formed in 2010, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the state had become a hub for international and domestic forced labor and prostitution.
The North Texas Human Trafficking Task Force -- with investigators from 16 police departments and six vice units -- has investigated more than 30 trafficking cases in Fort Worth, making three arrests and rescuing three victims, Fort Worth police spokesman Pedro Criado said.
Since it began in 2007, the national human-trafficking hotline, 888-373-7888, operated by the Polaris Project, has received 645 calls from Dallas-Fort Worth, spokeswoman Megan Fowler said.
Rusnok said increasing public awareness of human trafficking is essential to overcoming the crime.
"The victims are brainwashed and end up terrified of their traffickers and fearful of law enforcement as well," he said.
A third significant facet of Milestone's run is that it's community-focused, Chesnut said.
"We don't just want to be a local church that sits in a building, but really gets out into the community and makes a difference," she said.
This report includes material from the Star-Telegram archives.
Terry Evans, 817-390-7620
Twitter: @fwstevans
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