Customer Reviews

A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An absolutely astounding work of journalism, Ben Skinner's "A Crime So Monstrous" is a veritable call to arms for anyone concerned about the world's most disenfranchised people. By introducing us to his subjects and enabling us to understand both where they have come from and where they are going, Skinner's profiles of modern day slaves are candid, compassionate and completely unique. The writer, who has clearly devoted his heart and soul to his subject, often immersing himself in dangerous situations, exhibits enormous bravery as he details his travels in some of the world's most treacherous terrains. Whether he is infiltrating child slave markets in Haiti or interviewing a former sex slave in Romania, Skinner makes it clear that modern day slavery is a formidable threat to the human species, one that thrives on poverty, misguided policies and multi-sector corruption. But ACSM also proposes and encourages solutions as Skinner illuminates the amazing work of NGOs, ambassadors and activists committed to facilitating sustainable solutions. Clearly one of the best books ever written by a young writer, this is mandatory reading for the human community and one worthy of a permanent home in academic institutions, UN sessions, book clubs, libraries, and human rights circles.

I had the privilege of reading this book before publication, I was struck by the lengths to which Mr. Skinner traveled to write and research this great book. I confess to being largely ignorant of the volume and nature of human trafficking which still exists, but this book opened my eyes to the mechanics and politics of the oft-ignored plight of millions around the world.

I found it very easy to read and that Mr. Skinner's approach provides a comprehensive introduction to one of the world's most troubling problems. You will definitely not be sorry for choosing this book.

This edgy, unflinching study of slavery plunges us into the bowels of countries I wouldn't want to fly over, let alone visit. As he calmly haggles down the price of human beings with grinning men and women, the author plays out roles that professional actors might flinch at. Of course for Skinner, there must have been no rehearsals, no second takes. It must have been raw. And yet somehow he still manages to weave in elegant and even beautiful prose - the evocative phrase describing India's enslaved `human jackhammers' is now permanently lodged in my lexicon - and even a few comic moments to relieve our tension. This book has been rightly compared with two brilliant, prize-winning books on genocide, and yet in some ways the author lures us farther and further into strange new territory. He explores the human nature and contours of an evil that has more shades of grey and more intimacy than genocide, an evil that appears to be expanding into new shadows and metastasizing like the hydra he describes at one point, rather than contracting under sunlight of exposure. It also, I think, requires a different kind of discipline: one has to interview the living victims and perpetrators of slavery as evil unfolds in the present, rather than probe unreliable memories to reconstruct horrific events of the past. Skinner's dialogues with hideous people leave us at the end of his book, sitting on the edge of our comfortable sofas, having silent conversations with our conscience, haunted in the best possible way.

Benjamin Skinner traveled around the world to witness firsthand the drudgery, abuse and depravity of modern-day slavery; he probably saw a good deal more than could fit into his book, which is an unsparing account of just how horrible and widespread slavery is. Skinner's writing is evocative. He brings to life various places around the globe including Haiti's cities and countryside, Romanian slums, the desert of Sudan, night clubs in Dubai, rural mines in India, and a well-to-do American suburb; his descriptions of human degradation, cruelty and greed are sickening. He talks to slaves (both current and former), slave traders, slave owners, anti-slavery activists, and government officials; throughout the book he also tells the story of U.S. official John Miller and his uphill and exhausting battle against slavery worldwide. To get some of his stories Skinner actually had to pose at various times as a potential slave buyer, and he briefly touches on the ethics of that choice (as well as his decision not to buy people's freedom from slave traders).

He succeeds in conveying the complexity of slavery, how and why it continues to exist and the various forms that it takes. In addition to the harrowing accounts of slaves themselves, he writes about the role that individuals, institutions, cultural norms and socioeconomic factors play in the perpetration of slavery and the creation of circumstances and conditions that allow slavery to flourish. It's frustrating to read about the way governments around the world turn a blind eye to slavery, even while paying lip-service to the idea of fighting it and upholding human dignity. The UN's record on this issue is unsurprisingly disgraceful as well. Skinner relates how UN officials, for political reasons, often refuse to refer to slavery as slavery (preferring terms such as 'abduction', for instance), and half-heartedly spend money on anti-slavery initiatives that are proven failures (he also discusses the complete farce that is the UN Human Rights Commission).

The book is detailed, complex and approaches slavery from different angles. In addition to discussing commercial sex slavery, his book brings to light agricultural, industrial and domestic enslavement (where, in addition to backbreaking work for no pay whatsoever, rape and brutality are also commonplace), and slavery in the context of war - as with the cultural and racial genocide waged on black Africans in the Sudan. Into this bleak picture Skinner also brings stories of hope - people who survived slavery, whether as children or adults, and who in spite of their scars have rebuilt their lives; he also profiles individuals who fight against slavery and actively work to rebuild the lives of former slaves and integrate them into society as productive members. Skinner doesn't write these stories with melodrama or sentimentality, but as a means of giving these people a voice and in hopefully motivating the reader to learn more and contribute to the fight against slavery; the conclusion of his book names what he thinks are effective anti-slavery organizations and non-governmental groups.

Overall, he's written an excellent book about an ages-old human condition that persists to this day, no matter how much we'd wish to pretend otherwise.

I work for a well known organization in Southeast Asia working against trafficking and sexual exploitation. While I believe that Skinner had good intentions when writing this piece, I do not believe it was written in a way sensitive to the confidentiality needs of trafficking victims and survivors. Rather than painting a picture of How to Buy a Child Slave: 101 (which is my own title for this book), as well as (in my opinion) a "pat the US State department on the back" piece, I feel it could have done a much better job at challenging those in the West to take a closer look at responsible consumer habits, the demand for slaves, advocacy strategies for international slavery, and LAST BUT NOT LEAST - the exploitation and trafficking that is happening in OUR OWN BACKYARDS - the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

"A Crime So Monstrous" presents a gripping, first-hand account of modern day human slavery. Author Benjamin Skinner takes readers into the dark underworld of human bondage and exploitation that is all but a plane and cab ride from the life of luxury we enjoy in the West. Skinner traveled the world to meet slavetraders, slaves and ex-slaves. He tells the stories of several individuals who have been subjected to horrific, inhumane treatment and put through the most horrendous of conditions. The result is an intense, authentic book that people must read.

Skinner hits the most desperate locales where today's slavery has taken hold. The seediest spots in Haiti, Moldova, Sudan, India, and Dubai set the scenes of the book. Skinner tells the stories of victims of slavery from each of those regions. But he does so in a way that both details some of the horrors they experienced while giving voice to their dignity and pointing to their hopes of overcoming the challenges that remain for former slaves once the chains have been broken.

Along the way, Skinner also meets with former U.S. Ambassador John Miller, who headed the U.S. State Departments office to combat trafficking in human persons. Skinner's portrait of Amb. Miller is enjoyable and offers a bit of relief to readers. This book is NOT light reading. It can be just plain difficult to pick up on a sunny day. The horrors of slavery can certainly make one want to avoid it. But the fact that the evil of slavery exists in the world today is reason itself to read this important book.

Skinner adopts modern-day abolitionist Kevin Bales' definition of "slave": a person who is compelled to work, through force or fraud, for no pay beyond subsistence. This definition seems right to me. Apparently, there is some debate in abolitionist circles about the definition of slavery--or at least debate over what the emphasis of anti-slavery efforts should be today. "Wage slavery" and sex slavery are both evils, but some abolitionists differ in means and priorities in eradicating them both. Skinner gets into the fray here, and gives a picture of Michael Horowitz that is none too complimentary. This reviewer simply doesn't have the background to assess all of Skinner's evaluations. But readers of the book should at least take time to read Logan Paul Gage's May 5, 2008 "First Things" review of Skinner's book to get another perspective.

If slavery isn't wrong, nothing is wrong. "A Crime So Monstrous" is a book about an evil that must be stopped. Get it. Read it.

Every page of this book is fascinating, and scary.

Perhaps the end is the worst of all. Skinner has a brief epilogue where he points out: "You might wonder what became of the slaves I found in bondage. What happened to the young Romanian woman whose owner offered her in trade for a used car? Did she escape that fetid Bucharest brothel?...And what of Gonoo Lal Kol, his family and the other villagers in Lohagara Dhal? Did they seize the moment of their master's flight and break their chains? What of those unseen slaves whom trafficers offered to sell to me? What of the three girls that I haggled for in Istanbul?" (p 287).

He adds, painfully, "I wish I could tell you that they are all okay...I don't know what happened to them. Their fate haunts me" (p 287).

All the stories in this book will haunt you. How can slavery be so hidden, so unreported, and yet to common?

What is the matter with our civilization, that we don't rise up, take action, and stop this evil practice?

This book was a great change of pace compared to so many other writings on the subject of modern slavery. I am glad that Ben Skinner was not afraid to take to task some of the people on the "side of good" like Michael Horowitz who seem more concerned with their own version of evangelical morality, specifically prostitution, than with the actual slaves needing help. An excellent excerpt from page 283 concerning this:

"But privately, the Justice Department officials who actually dealt with victims were galled that the Horowitz coalition expected them to find moral equivalency in the victimization of a $90,000-dollar-a-year call girl in Georgetown, who kept her own income and worked for herself, and a fourteen-year-old girl, raped fifteen times a day in a fetid trailer in a migrant labor camp."

It was nice to see that Skinner wasn't going to give a pass to people just because they were trying to help. He rightfully shows how even grim situations like this are taken advantage of for political and religious gains back home. He goes into the grey area where a slave with no education and no ability to provide for himself is in almost as bad of a situation after they are taken out of bondage as they were while in it. His explanation of how the problem is so complex and not just all about "sex work" but rather about poverty and societal norms, like the Indian Caste system, do a better job than strictly approaching it from a limited viewpoint like "religious persecution" in southern Sudan.

I found the sections detailing the inaction of the US Government to be the slowest parts of the book and frankly think they could have been summarized in a much shorter manner without the book suffering. I feel this would have provided more space for the actual first hand stories from Skinner that make this book a true eye-opener. Most readers already know how inept the government is and don't need 40-50 pages showing us this.

What readers do benefit from are the mouth agape situations Skinner details from first hand experience where humans are bought and sold for less money than most of us spend buying a TV or Laptop. The times when he tells the story of entire families enslaved over debts incurred by their grandparents that are literally less than the price of a cup of coffee in the West are what I think make this book stand out. It spends time on individual cases rather than simply draw conclusions from statistics that are hopelessly inaccurate to start with.

Skinner does a fantastic job of explaining the true plight of people who have to decide to sell their child into likely servitude or let them starve. These are not the cut and dry moral lessons most westerners are used to dealing with and this book does a great service by presenting these choices to the reader in such a raw way. In fact I think this explains why often the people trying to help end up doing so little good in the end, simply because they don't understand the consequences only their own moral affront. Sure getting the kidnapped Romani woman out of the brothels of Amsterdam is a noble endeavor but the problem is not over just because some moral injustice was rectified in the eyes of the Southern Baptist Convention. Now you have a woman 1000 miles from home with no money, likely little education and often very little guidance. What has happened is you have traded one problem for another and decided only the first problem is worthy of your group's involvement. Even those that send this poor woman home to rural Romania are just sending her back to the place that spawned the whole ordeal in the beginning without any improved future prospects and now likely mental problems. This is the treadmill of misery that Skinner really brings to light in his writing and that will hopefully open the eyes of people to the scale of the problem.

I was really impressed that this is the first book from this author and look forward to future titles from him on the subject since he seems to have a passion for this area that transcends his own regard for his wellbeing.

Skinner does a spectacular job of personalizing a terrible crime that is committed daily in countries all over the world, including our own USA. His accounts of real slaves are gripping, utterly believable, and absolutely heart-wrenching.

Completely nonpartisan, Skinner pulls no punches. Where officials do right he reports it with honor; where they fail to do right or turn their backs he justly condemns them with the evidence. There are plenty of rogues, and a few honorable warriors, among these pages. But the compelling stories are of those who live still in bondage, and those who have been freed.

Conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, if you don't come away from this book enraged and outraged, you aren't paying attention. The only thing more shameful than the lipservice and window dressing that are all the Bush administration has given to the cause of slavery, would be the fact that previous administrations from Clinton on back didn't even do the window dressing.

This is a short, concise, and in-your-face explanation of the state of slavery in the world today. It's shocking and upsetting, but it simply needs to be read by the world's policy-makers. I personally had no idea that these inhumane acts take place in modern society. E. Benjamin Skinner is an author I will certainly read again.