View from the front –
CEO Ben Cooley

“I simply cannot stand the fact that children as young as three years old are being sold into slavery in the UK. It breaks my heart to have met children as young as twelve years old who have been forced to sell their bodies for sex. Our aim is to make this country uninhabitable for traffickers and a place where they can no longer continue their despicable trade.

It can be easy to feel very small in comparison to the vast and growing problem of human trafficking. Sometimes we can feel like David, who wasn’t even invited to the battle. He only went to deliver a picnic for his brothers, but he saw the challenge that faced his people and he volunteered to fight. David had no position to be at the battlefield, never mind the fact that he was fighting with just a stone and sling. Yet David took down Goliath!

I feel exactly the same about what we are doing. Over the last year we have been learning how to fight and how to plan strategies that will bring about freedom. I know that God is with us, and our God is a God who takes down giants. Just like David said, ‘Who is this Philistine anyway that dares to defy the army of the living God?’ I want to say, ‘Who are these traffickers, anyway, who dare to destroy innocent lives and sell them for sex; who are these traffickers who are raping our women and children; who are these traffickers who defy us and continue with their evil trade?’

It is time to get passionate, to feel a godly anger against what is happening in our own country, cities and communities, and to take radical action. It says in Isaiah 61, ‘The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.’ This is our call, this is our passion and dream and we feel God has commissioned us for the task. We will break down doors, rescue those who are imprisoned and restore their lives.

We are excited at the progress we have made already. I firmly believe that if we work together, we will have the momentum to change history. We can change the trafficking statistics of this nation. But it will take time, it will take dedication and it will take a fighting spirit. It is time to go to battle on behalf of innocent women and children who have no voice of their own and be the hand that rescues them. It is time to pick up our sling and stone, take hold of whatever God has placed in our hand and use it for the fight.

To see slavery end is a big vision and making it happen will take action from a generation of people who refuse to look on and do nothing. Yet when we unite together we can and will bring the freedom, hope and justice that cries out to so desperately to be fulfilled. And it is something everyone of us can help towards.”

Ben Cooley