The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman’s Fight for Justice by Kathryn Bolkovac with Cari Lynn. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
When Nebraska police officer and divorced mother of three Kathryn Bolkovac saw a recruiting announcement for private military contractor DynCorp International, she applied and was hired. Good money, world travel, and the chance to help rebuild a war-torn country sounded like the perfect job. Bolkovac was shipped out to Bosnia, where DynCorp had been contracted to support the UN peacekeeping mission. She was assigned as a human rights investigator, heading the gender affairs unit. The lack of proper training provided sounded the first alarm bell, but once she arrived in Sarajevo, she found out that things were a lot worse. At great risk to her personal safety, she began to unravel the ugly truth about officers involved in human trafficking and forced prostitution and their connections to private mercenary contractors, the UN, and the U.S. State Department. After bringing this evidence to light, Bolkovac was demoted, felt threatened with bodily harm, was fired, and ultimately forced to flee the country under cover of darkness—bringing the incriminating documents with her. Thanks to the evidence she collected, she won a lawsuit against DynCorp, finally exposing them for what they had done. This is her story and the story of the women for whom she helped achieve justice.
About the Author -Kathryn Bolkovac is a former police investigator from Nebraska who served as an International Police Task Force human rights investigator in Bosnia. She cooperated with Human Rights Watch to expose the misconduct and human rights abuses committed against young girls, forced into prostitution and used as sex slaves by U.S. military contractors such as DynCorp and other UN-related police and international organizations. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Cari Lynn is the author of three books of narrative nonfiction, including Leg the Spread: A Woman’s Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys Club of Commodities Trading. Lynn has written for numerous magazines and newspapers including O, Health, Good Housekeeping, and the Chicago Tribune. She lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Zealous Love: A Practical Guide to Social Justice by Mike and Danae Yankoski. (Zondervan, 2009)
If you’re passionate about helping others, but aren’t sure where or how to focus your energy, Zealous Love offers information and ideas to help you integrate social justice into your life. Zealous Love introduces you to eight of the world’s most pressing challenges: hunger, unclean water, HIV/AIDS, creation degradation, lack of education, economic inequality, refugees, and human trafficking. But it does more than educate. It provides real, practical, do-able steps anyone can take to help make a difference. Each of the engaging chapters features first-person contributions from people like Dave Batstone (Not for Sale), Scott Todd (Compassion International), Sean Litton (International Justice Mission), Debbie Diederich (World Vision), Shane Claiborne (The Simple Way), Wendell Berry, Marva Dawn, and many others. Each contributor saw a need and decided to do something about it.
About the Author -Mike and Danae Yankoski live in the Pacific Northwest with their dog, Elliott. Their passions include backpacking, hiking, running, tea, growing veggies, good books, and substantive conversation. Mike is the author of Under the Overpass and Danae is the co-author with Francis Chan of Crazy Love and The Forgotten God.
The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It by Victor Malarek. (Arcade Publishing, 2009)
Each year more than 800,000 women and children are lured, tricked or forced into prostitution to meet an apparently insatiable demand, joining an estimated 10 million women already ensnared in the $20 billion worldwide sex trade. To date, most research on the subject has focused on the various issues that propel these women into the trade, but little has been investigated, or written, about those who trigger the demand, the “Johns.” In this hard-hitting expose, Malarek unmasks the kind of men and organizations that foster and drive the sex trade, from America to Europe, Brazil to Thailand, Phnom Penh to St. Petersburg and Costa Rica. The Johns is a chilling look into a dark corner of the world that these men have created at the expense of countless women and children.
About the Author -Award winning journalist Victor Malarek is a senior reporter for CTV’s W-FIVE. During his thirty-year career, he has worked for The Globe and Mail and CBC’s the fifth estate. His investigative reporting has been recognized with four Michener Awards and the Gemini Award for Canada’s Top Broadcast Journalist (1997). Malarek has written five non-fiction books: The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade, which has been published in ten countries; Gut Instinct: The Making of an Investigative Reporter; Merchants of Misery; Haven’s Gate: Canada’s Immigration Fiasco; and Hey…Malarek! He lives in Toronto, Canada.
Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective by Shelley Louise. (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
This book examines all forms of human trafficking globally, revealing the operations of the trafficking business and the nature of the traffickers themselves. Using a historical and comparative perspective, it demonstrates that there is more than one business model of human trafficking and that there are enormous variations in human trafficking in different regions of the world.
About the Author – Louise Shelley is a Professor in the School of Public Policy and the founder and Director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at George Mason University. She is a leading U.S. expert on transnational crime and terrorism, with a particular focus on the former Soviet Union. Dr Shelley is the author of Policing Soviet Society (1996), Lawyers in Soviet Work Life (1984) and Crime and Modernization (1981), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on all aspects of transnational crime, corruption and the crime-terror nexus.
Terrify No More: Young Girls Held Captive and the Daring Undercover Operation to Win Their Freedom by Gary Haugen. (Thomas Nelson, 2010)
In a small village outside of Phnom Pehn, little children as young as five years old were forced to live as sex slaves. Day after day their hope was slipping away. Tireless workers from International Justice Mission (IJM) infiltrated the ring of brothels and gathered evidence to free the children. Headed up by former war-crimes investigator Gary Haugen, IJM faced impossible odds – police corruption, death threats, and mission-thwarting tip-offs. But they used their expert legal finesse and high-tech investigative techniques to save the lives of 37 young girls and secured the arrest and conviction of several perpetrators. Terrify No More focuses on this dramatic rescue story, and uses flashbacks to tell those of many other victims who were given a second chance at life by this amazing organization.
Haugen credits the success of his work to God – “I believe we all yearn for the joy that arrives… when we find our own active place in the struggle against evil and discover the transforming power of life the Divine has granted to mere mortals” – and shrugs off doubters. “Some Christians are uncomfortable with the idea that God has been in a dark, repulsive brothel…. Our investigators are not only comfortable with the idea—it’s a truth they count on.”
About the Author – Gary A. Haugen is president and CEO of International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights organization based in Washington,
D.C. Prior to founding IJM, he worked in the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice and was director of the United Nations’ genocide investigation in Rwanda. Haugen is a graduate of Harvard University and received a J.D. from the University of Chicago. He is the author of Terrify No More and Just Courage.
Justice For Life 