Guy Jacobson: Using film to end sex slavery

High risk research

Guy decided raising awareness about sex trafficking was step one to ending the practice, but wanted to make sure that his movie was authentic.

“I wanted to utilize my film company and mass media. I though ‘I can try and make a film about this issue and maybe people will listen and I can educate in an honest non-Hollywood way.’”

He decided to tell just one story, so that the audience could really connect with it, “The story I wanted to tell was the story of at twelve year old Vietnamese girl that was kidnapped and sold and trafficked across the border into Cambodia, which is a common story. I couldn’t tell the story of over 2 million kids from every country in the world, so I picked that story.”

As he was writing the movie, Guy decided he knew a lot, but not enough.

“I knew a lot, statistics, things from the academic perspective. What I didn’t know was how a twelve year old trafficked Vietnamese girl thinks. How does she speak? What level of English does she have? What does she do early in the mornings at the brothel, what does she do at night? I didn’t know and I didn’t want to make a cliché story.”

So Guy did something he calls “idiotic,” for safety reasons: he went back to Cambodia to go undercover in the brothels pretending to be a customer – a pretty big leap from that corner office on Wall Street.

Get the hell out: You're going to die

A former soldier in the Israeli army and a self-described “pretty big guy,” Guy still calls the danger he faced in Cambodia was unparalleled, because the sex trade and most of the brothels are run my gun-toting mafias and corrupt government organizations.

After his undercover trip, Guy went back to actually shoot the movie, and ended up shooting two full length documentaries on sex trafficking too.

When he and his film crew landed, he got a call from INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) who according to Guy, said “‘You guys are insane. You’re in the most dangerous place in the world to make a movie with that subject matter. You’re all going to die, get the hell out.’”

Luckily for victims of sex trafficking, whose stories have been brought to global attention because of Guy, they were “particularly good at not listening [to Interpol]” and the team stayed to shoot the movies.

“I told them no and they said ‘You don’t understand, according to our informants, they, the Chinese mafia, already have contracts on your lives. They are going to kill you so get out of the country immediately.’”

Instead, Guy hired an army of 40 bodyguards with automatic machine guns to protect his film crew and then ventured into the most dangerous parts of Cambodia’s Red Light District, even shooting scenes inside the brothels.

Awareness through movies

Still Guy says, being there let him make a film that was “a true and honest interpretation of what was happening.”

After the team shot the footage and returned to the U.S., Guy knew he had done too much to tick off the powerful people who benefited from the sex slave trade to return to Cambodia anytime soon.

“At this point, I can’t go back. I knew that before I left, but then I heard about it over the last few years many times – from the FBI, from Interpol – that the next time I go is the time I die. I hope I’ll be able to go back one day.”

More than spreading the word

Besides raising awareness, Guy and his non-profit, the REDLIGHT CHILDREN Campaign, obviously want to put an end to human trafficking. Guy supports and works with groups like the Somaly Mam foundation, who help victims recover, but also wants to work to stop sex trafficking at a bigger level.

One approach is to work on issues that contribute to victimizing women by sex slavery, “It’s much easier to victimize people who are poor and who are less educated and it’s much easier to victimize people who have less legal protection or who are in a corrupt country,” Guy says.

But he also believes that this might not be the most effective way to go about ending sex trafficking.

REDLIGHT CHILDREN is about to release an updated version of the White Papers, which will help lay out the legal ways that people can end trafficking. The document explains what the issue is, what the myths are, and how you can actually make legal and economic policies that will decrease the number of women being violated.

“We’re going to lobby state by state by government, what you need to do in terms of flaws, regulations, enforcement, policy and economic action in order to decrease it in your area and overall.”

And with 300 chapters of REDLIGHT across the country and online, people can easily start virtual chapters and come together to sign petitions and rally to raise awareness get states and countries to change their laws.

Guys says people will be able to take the White Papers and other resources put out there by REDLIGHT, the Somaly Mam Foundation and the US State Department, and “go to the media, go to local government and say ‘You guys don’t even need to figure out what needs to be done. Here’s what needs to be done and we expect you to do it.’”

Ready to do something about the sale of girls and women? Check out orgs like REDLIGHT and the Somaly Mam Foundation. Read the gripping and shocking stories of real sex slaves, in Somaly Mam's The Road of Lost Innocence, or Enslaved. Raise awareness by hosting screening of movies like Holly.