Slavery: An Ugly Modern Reality

The video is grainy. The sound quality is not so good.

But what is clear in a piece of undercover video shot in one of India's busiest red light districts, is the ugly truth that millions are trapped in sexual exploitation.

"We have found children as young as five-years-old being sold in brothels to customers from around the world," said Bethany Hoang, the director of International Justice Mission Institute.

As many as one million people, mostly women and children, are traded for forced sex or servitude in countries from Asia to the former Soviet Union to Europe to the Middle East.

Some 17,000 alone are trafficked into the United States each year.

"It is as grave a problem as anyone could even imagine," said Hoang.

It is so grave that experts say there are more people trapped in slavery today than there were when the Civil War was fought.

An estimated 27 million people are enslaved around the world- half of them children under the age of eighteen.

"Slavery comes in so many forms. It is not just working on agricultural plantations like slavery was mainly here in the U.S. It can be anything from rolling cigarettes to making bricks to forced prostitution in brothels," human rights activist Zach Hunter.

And often there's a price to be paid for refusing to submit to forced labor or sexual slavery.

Hoang said, "They are held there under violent threats; they are held there knowing that if they left, their families could be killed, they could be killed."

Human trafficking is becoming the fastest growing form of modern-day slavery. After drugs and guns, human trafficking is considered the third largest source of profits for international criminals- raking in some $31 billion a year.

Last Friday, the film "Amazing Grace," opened in theaters across the country. The movie traces the real life story of William Wilberforce and his struggles to end slavery in the 18th century.

"No matter how long you shout you will not drown out the voices of the people," said one character in the film.

The struggle continues 200 years later and those involved in the abolitionist movement today are hoping that the movie will serve as a rallying call to end the scourge once and for all.