Anonymously Yours

Gayle Ferraro’s disturbing look into sex trafficking in Myanmar.

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A painfully intimate study of the horrors of sex trafficking in Myanmar
(formerly Burma), this powerful documentary represents the sort of risk-taking investigative
journalism that today’s TV news media practice only rarely. Ferraro and her bare-bones crew dared
to smuggle their recording equipment past the military and enlisted the clandestine help of a social
worker to gain access to four women who agreed to talk about their experiences as enslaved prostitutes.

The women speak in agonizing detail of having been sold — some
by their own parents or boyfriends — into lives of violence, poverty, hunger, and degradation;
their pimps pay local police to turn a blind eye to the trafficking, which is conducted out
of restaurants and hotels. With up to 40 million women enslaved worldwide — human
trafficking is estimated by the United Nations to be the world’s fastest-growing criminal
enterprise — the film deserves to be shocking, and it is. Though the women are seen striving
to create new and better lives for themselves, Ferraro hardly disguises the realities of extreme
poverty in Myanmar and throughout Southeast Asia that will likely keep some of the world’s poorest
and most vulnerable people trapped in sex slavery. When 17-year-old ZuZu — who disappeared
during the editing of the film — says, “I wonder what English-speaking people will think
of this,” she seems to be speaking for Ferraro as well.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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