S1.E8 ∙ Tour of the White House with George and Barbara Bush

SOLD: Fighting the New Global Slave Trade uses parallel story telling to step into the lives of three contemporary abolitionists in different countries. Symphorienne Kessouagni lives in rural Togo, where parents send their children to live with distant relatives because they can't afford to feed them or pay their school fees. They believe the children will do small chores in exchange for an education. Instead, the children end up in the hands of "brokers" who smuggle them across the border to a neighboring country and sell them. Tiny boys are forced to haul brutal heavy loads at markets. The girls are exploited as domestic servants. 32-year-old Symphorienne, visits these markets and border villages, slowly winning the trust of the child slaves and encouraging them to escape. She plays hardball with their exploiters and negotiates the children's freedom whenever possible. But she's a nurturing mother figure and a tough disciplinarian to 17 former child slaves, who live with her. Most either can't locate their parents or their families won't take them back. A firebrand Christian, Symphorienne struggles to help her children believe in a heavenly father who cares for them, even though their biological fathers have abandoned or sold them. Sunitha Krishnan is a former Hindu nun in Hyderabad, India, who presides over a much larger enterprise than Symphorienne's. Sunitha runs 17 schools for girls rescued from brothels and for the children of prostitutes, as well a center for HIV positive children, all infected through rape or prostitution. She regularly lobbies officials to enforce anti-slavery laws and pushes police to bust-up brothels. When they don't move fast enough for her, she organizes her own brothel raids.

A filmmaker's personal journey to understand and shed light on the origins and the enormity of the war against Indian women.