The Left’s problem with exposing child traffickers
Briana Oser
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Rolling Stone magazine has released a second article criticizing the movie Sound of Freedom, which was made to bring awareness to the grim realities of child sex trafficking. Despite the film’s popularity and its important message, Rolling Stone can only respond critically because the movie does not promote its particular leftist agenda.
For those unfamiliar with the movie, please forgive a mild “spoiler alert.” Sound of Freedom has managed to bring millions of Americans’ attention to a gruesome subject that has been swept under the rug. Regular people do not often discuss child trafficking because it is one of the darkest realities of our world. The media rarely covers it. But Sound of Freedom, despite how difficult the film is to watch, presents it in a way the public can swallow. The director’s decision to center the plot on saving one child emphasizes the value of each individual life. When the main character fights to retrieve her, the audience is given hope that it can make a difference and offer help.
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Child sex trafficking is a horror that concerns everybody. It should motivate Americans to unite. But Sound of Freedom is not about racism or LGBT or one of the Left’s preapproved serious topics. It distracts from the narrative. It focuses on a very real problem affecting parents and children. And it is currently No. 3 at the box office. So, the Left has found ways to make it divisive.
Rolling Stone writer EJ Dickson did a great job of finding a few “experts” who will say exactly what she wants them to say. One of them nitpicked, “Yet from the movie’s opening montage, which shows surveillance footage of children being snatched by strangers off the streets, Sound of Freedom offers a ‘false perception’ of how the majority of child trafficking actually takes place.”
It is true that sex trafficking happens commonly through grooming in preestablished relationships. The kind of trafficking where children are snatched off the streets is not as frequent. However, the footage was real. It was meant to introduce the unsettling tone of the film. Sound of Freedom is a movie that tells a story. It is meant to move viewers to think critically, do their research, and become aware of the subject.
Another complaint from one of Dickson’s experts was that “The movie, and films about human trafficking in general, also doesn’t provide much insight into the extensive process of providing support to victims and helping them deal with their trauma after they escape a dangerous situation.”
Again, Sound of Freedom is a movie. Angel Studios wisely chose to expose child sex trafficking through a medium that is accessible to a wide audience. It makes little sense to complain that it doesn’t tell all the aspects of the underlying issue in exactly the way the reviewer wants it told.
It is not unreasonable to wonder why so many elements of the Left seem hostile to conservative concerns about child trafficking. They seem unable to see the issue in any way other than through their own ideological lenses.
Consider that California Assembly Democrats (joined by a lone Republican) blocked a bill on Tuesday that would make child sex trafficking a “serious felony.” The bill would have put child sex trafficking on the same level as rape and murder so that perpetrators would either spend their lives in jail or undergo the death sentence.
When questioned, the committee Democrats argued that prison is harmful: “We will not build on a deeply flawed sentencing system that unfairly punishes disadvantaged communities.” Another Democrat who blocked the bill said, “All they do is increase our investment in systems of harm and subjugation at the expense of the investments that the communities need to not have this be a problem, to begin with.”
What actually punishes disadvantaged communities, or any communities, is child sex traffickers. Keeping them behind bars is going to keep people safe. Pedophiles cannot be magically turned from their ways in one or two years.
You have to be a very sad person to criticize a movie that raises awareness of child sex trafficking, even if it is not representative of every case and situation. You have to be equally as sad to excuse pedophiles because you want a more progressive prison system. The modern Left has a talent for grasping at straws like no other group in history.
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Briana Oser is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.