[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

 

 

A Personal Documentary Journey

I was in the middle of Kamati Pura, the largest red light district in the world and I didn’t even know it. Camera in hand, girlfriend (now wife) at my side, assaulted by smells and snapping away. Later I learned that every vile desire a man could dream of was for sale and child virgins were the region’s most noted delicacies.

I was traveling the world with my girlfriend. The idea was to do what we would never have the time or the luxury to do again. I had just graduated from the University of Utah having majored in film studies.

Among the places I traveled, India and Nepal haunted me the most.
The chaos, the contradictions, the colors, the beauty, the revulsion. The hustlers, the healers, the schiesters, the teachers. What was real? What was not? I found my solace in reading books, newspapers, travel guides, and UNICEF reports, anything I could get my hands on to help connect the dots. Sorting and sifting and trying to make sense of it all, I had the good fortune of meeting Matthew Friedman. Matt took me on a journey that would change my life and haunt my dreams. Born in Newington, CT, a technical advisor for the Office of Health and Family Planning to USAID/Nepal Matthew Friedman is documenting and fighting against the child sex slave trade in Asia. With his coaching and the help of others trying to stop the "fleshtrade" I connected more dots than I once cared or dared to know about. Matt helped me see the unspeakable, and shoot the unthinkable. And that is what this film is about-- tracing the trek of the Asian child sex trade and giving physical form to the unspeakable and unthinkable.

It is our hope to allow these children the opportunity to tell their stories, and by doing so share their hopes, dreams and unanswered prayers.

For one of the most religious countries in the world I found it quite ironic that Nepal the birthplace of Lord Buddha, preaching the teachings of love and compassion participated in the child sex slave trade. It was later that I discovered India and Nepal's shame was not an isolated problem, but that every nation in the world participates in the human suffering callously labeled as child prostitution. In my mind it is nothing short of slavery--where children are chattel and rape is the instrument of profitability.


Common Goal

Each year, over one million women and girls as are trafficked into the sex trade throughout the world. This emerging problem represents one of the most horrid human rights violations known to human kind. After finding themselves at a brothel, many girls are gang raped, tortured and forced to have sex with as many as twenty men a day. Following several years of this sexual slavery, many become infected by various sexually transmitted diseases, including an 80% HIV/AIDS rate. Because so little is known about the problem, both at home and abroad, this film attempts to bring together a number of groups/individuals who are working to fight against trafficking each with the common goal to create awareness and to help bring about action against this problem.


A Life Changing Event

The dream of the great American novel had been usurped by cinema in my generation and I was determined to produce the screenplay that would define my career in my first draft. After a year of research in cyberspace and communications with people on the frontlines trying to stop the slave trade, it was time to see first hand what I had been researching and seeing on my computer.

It was there in Nepal on my very first day where everything changed. We were visiting our first non-profit who provided aftercare for the young girls who had been rescued from the brothels of Bombay

There in front of me was a room, a room of lost innocence, a room of stolen youth. Thirty young girls and babies all returned from India. All dying of AIDS, all knowing they are dying of AIDS. Every emotion running through me. Should I cry? Should I scream? What should I do? - -Journal Entry, April 20, 1999

It was that exact moment when I realized the first step was not to write a fictionalized screenplay, but rather the first step must be to document the real story, by combining real words, and real statistics with pictures that don't lie.

There were so many stories of strength and resiliency. So many unanswered prayers and so many betrayals left unaccounted for. My hope is that we have created a film that begins to paint a picture of what human beings are capable of. It is a story of repeated betrayals and yet, it reminds us of how resilient the human spirit is and can be.