Kay Danes and her husband were detained for a year by the Laotian secret police and forced to endure mock executions, torture and arbitrary detention, all while working with an international security protection service for the United Nations.
Danes was just one panelist offering her viewpoint on modern day slavery in Macky Auditorium the third day of the Conference on World Affairs.
The auditorium was filled with excited anticipation as many came early to hear three distinguished speakers and their stories on modern day slavery.
Benjamin Skinner, a “specialist on modern day atrocities and child slavery,” opened the panel by defining slaves as those who are “forced to work under fraud and threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence.” He briefly mapped out the history of slavery and tried to humanize the issue by sharing his personal experiences.
Despite his vast experience of going undercover to infiltrate trafficking networks, slave quarries and the ports of child slavery, Skinner said his duty as journalist was to observe but not to engage. He elaborated on his principle of academic detachment, saying that simply buying slaves out of slavery does nothing to help the victims of slavery.
“Emancipation done wrong will do deep suffering to those who are emancipated, people who have no skills, education or assistance,” Skinner said.
Danes, the next speaker, is one of Australia’s top social justice ambassadors.
Danes began by sharing a common experience of ignorance that many suburban middle class Americans have. She began “perpetuating a problem with [her] ignorance” after she opened a bodyguard/security protection service in Thailand and started taking many of her bodyguards to visit Thai sex workers.
“I’ve held a hand of many a frightened girl and told them it was okay, that [they] were better off with this foreigner than some other unknown one,” she said.
She was touched by many whom she met in the communist prison and gave up pursuing money, she said. Danes ended her 10 minute speech with words of encouragement.
“When you travel, you should really stop and look,” she said. “Not just at the glitter, remember, reflect and think.”
Maria Hinojosa, the third speaker, left her job at CNN as an urban affairs correspondent to focus on issues close to her heart, issues that impacted women and girls, namely child marriage. She has won numerous journalism awards, including two Emmys, the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Reporting on the Disadvantaged and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club for best documentary for her groundbreaking piece Child Brides: Stolen Lives.
According to Hinojosa who now works a senior correspondent for PBS, child marriage is a “socially legalized form of slavery because girls as young as three or four years old are losing their rights and voices when they get married off.”
“Their lives are essentially over because they [will] become reproductive machines and cleaning machines,” she said.
Hinojosa also told many personal stories over her years of investigative journalism.
Many community members who also attended the talk said they came away with profound insight.
Mark Jefferson, a Boulderite whose three children attend CU, said he got a lot out of the panel.
“I’m glad I came to this panel,” Jefferson said. “My children were actually the ones who made me come. The talk was brilliant.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer at Stephanie.lee-1@colorado.edu.
