The Innocent was a difficult book to write.
Human trafficking and exploitation is a pandemic wound that brutally disfigures our innocence and attacks the very essence of what it means to be human. Inspired by greed, religious intolerance, lust, and our innate need for dominance, the sale of humanity is an affliction that scars our very souls.
One cannot expose the horrors inherent in this insidious world unless you’re willing to realistically confront its tragic manifestations. It would be awkward to pen a novel about the physical and mental deformities soldiers suffered in WW1 without revealing the catastrophic reality they endured in the trenches.
With an abject subject that draws few parallels, I have attempted to invoke the reader’s visceral and emotional reactions without crossing the lines of decency. I have tried to imply the shocking world these children endure, without going into explicit detail or being needlessly sensationalistic. You can find graphic depictions elsewhere. Everywhere. I have left as many scenes as I could to your imagination. Infer what you will.
Over two decades ago, John Studinski, the chairman for Blackstone Investments who chairs the Talitha Kum, suggested that 140 countries attributed in some way or another to the trafficking of human beings. That represented about seventy-five million people, 65% of which were females under the age of sixteen. This figure didn’t include children bought, sold, or abducted to work as domestic slaves or in the world’s sweatshops so that we in the West can get the latest products at the cheapest price. Nor did it incorporate the children forced to work in labor camps or other dangerous positions, like dismantling decommissioned freighters in India’s shipyards.
Unlike the drug trade, human trafficking does not simply revolve around the transportation of inanimate products from one place to another. It is based on the subjugation, the physical and mental rape, and the gradual dehumanization of people who should mean so much to us: sons and daughters, wives and parents, sisters and brothers. Trafficking is only the beginning: it is what “the cargo” must face after they’ve been bought, sold, traded, or abducted, that can still a beating heart.
The perpetrators? Your neighbor. Pimps. Other prostitutes. Purveyors of cyberporn. Pedophiliac groups. Psychopaths. And fanatical, maniacal groups like ISIS and Hamas.
During a massive raid in Nigeria, Boko Haram rebels abducted almost two hundred young girls from a rural schoolhouse. Reports confirmed that most of the children were forced into being “camp prostitutes”. Others were sold into slavery to the groups’ allies and supporters. Only a weathered, beaten segment of the children have been found. Many were traded back, like discarded chattel.
ISIS cowards see people as fodder for their misguided campaigns, nothing more than financial aids that can be sold or traded for weapons, then killed for sadistic pleasure. Hamas has learned what the cartels already knew: that trafficking in humans is easier, safer, less costly and more lucrative than illegal narcotics. Naturally, the supply is unlimited. ISIS and their moronic, pusillanimous brethren have traditionally used terror as their main weapon in their despicable fight for their extremist fundamentalism. They abduct young village boys and turn them into child soldiers, ready to kill as ordered. Captured girls are taken to work as sex slaves for the “masked fighters,” when the men grow weary of using the boys. The other villagers are often massacred, all in the name of a religious fanaticism that horrifies true believers of Islam. The abject, unbelievable horror of the Hamas attack of October 2023 proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
As a result of my explorations, I will continue to support the organizations that spend their time and effort confronting the myriad forms of child exploitation around the world. I sincerely hope readers touched by these children’s’ stories can do the same. If The Innocent incites your passion, I hope it will inflame your compassion as well.
October 2025
Donald Owen Crowe
