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CNN Larry King Live

Worldwide Crisis: Human Trafficking

Aired April 04, 2010 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR, "CNN NEWSROOM": I'm Don Lemon live here at the CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta. "LARRY KING LIVE" coming up momentarily.

But what an Easter Sunday for a whole lot of folks; we're continuing to cover this breaking news out of Baja, California. A large earthquake measuring 7.2 in magnitude; it hit Baja just about three hours ago and we're told people as far away as downtown Los Angeles felt the tremor.

People are saying they felt it in Arizona. In Northern California there were some triggered events as far as Northern California as well, and also in Northern Mexico. We're following that as well.

A Captain Steve Ruda of the Los Angeles Fire Department tells CNN that the City of Los Angeles is secure right now. There are reports of power failures in some parts of the city but overall the city came through this quake largely unscathed. Listen to what he told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAPTAIN STEVER RUDA, LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPARTMENT: The City of Los Angeles is safe. We have a couple of reports of trapped elevators, people in elevators; that's probably from a power outage. Maybe the elevator shut down.

With this we get another good opportunity for the families that are together on Easter Sunday to talk about preparedness here in Southern California.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: All right, that was from the L.A. County Fire Department.

Listen, seismologists at Cal Tech say you can expect a big event, maybe a 6.0 in magnitude within the next few days. We're back with breaking news soon. I'm Don Lemon.

"LARRY KING" begins right now.

LARRY KING, CNN HOST: Tonight, slaves in 2010? The shocking answer is yes. The numbers are staggering, at least 27 million people, more now than in any other time in history. Women and children, kidnapped, bought, sold into bondage. The threat to the innocent is worldwide, including right here in America.

Ashley Judd, Lucy Liu and survivors of human trafficking join Lisa Ling to expose these monstrous crimes and to salute the courageous people who are fighting this stuff. Next on LARRY KING LIVE.

LISA LING, CNN GUEST HOST: Good evening I'm Lisa Ling, sitting in for Larry tonight.

Human bondage, slavery; it's illegal everywhere, yet it still exists damaging and destroying lives in every nation on earth. The trafficking of human beings is and always has been an appalling business. Modern slavery is woven into this fabric of our global economy. Those involved in the trade view slaves as cheap and disposable commodities.

It's an issue that I've covered around the world especially right here in the United States. So joining me to talk about modern slavery is Lucy Liu, actress and activist and co-producer and narrator of "Red Light", a documentary about child trafficking and Ashley Judd, actress and activist and Global Ambassador for Youth AIDS and on the board of directors of Population Services International.

Ashley, let's start. For you -- why has human trafficking become such an important issue for you?

ASHLEY JUDD, ACTRESS & ACTIVIST: Because it is such an abomination and in particular it exploits those who are already most pre-disposed to exploitation, the vulnerable, specifically girls and women. In my capacity as Global Ambassador of Youth AIDS I had no idea that I would stumble upon the global sex trade. I just thought I was going to try to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS amongst young people whom we are seeking worldwide to empower.

But because PSI is so focused on working specifically with the most vulnerable and poor I was immediately put into brothels in places like Cambodia and Thailand and India and the Congo and Kenya and Madagascar and I was -- you know, it's a staggering thing as I know you know. And it challenges my humanity on a daily basis.

And I'm very grateful to have the opportunity not only to talk about the problem but to actually talk about some solutions as well because I've been taught that it's abusive to highlight a problem without also pointing out a solution.

LING: So you see a correlation between HIV/AIDS and sexual trafficking around the world?

JUDD: There absolutely can be, because a person who is forced to have sex is in no position to protect and empower their reproductive health. Often they are not allowed to use a condom and of course probably get into this later, but it's well documented that paying clients will offer more money for sex without a condom and it's just an absolute violation of the integrity of personhood.

And so the virus -- because women are more physiological -- physiologically susceptible to HIV anyway really spreads through the practice of sex slavery.

LING: Lucy Liu is the narrator and producer of a powerful new documentary "Red Light". It exposes the sexploitation and enslavement of children in Cambodia. Here's a clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LUCY LIU, ACTRESS & ACTIVIST: It is highly unusual for victims of child exploitation to press charges against their perpetrators. Cambodia has laws against child prostitution but the system is stacked against the victims.

The sex trade is an extremely profitable endeavor. Brothel owners can easily bribe police, judges and government officials. This has led to increasingly corrupt system and a booming sex trade.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LING: Lucy thank you for being here. Now, people can see we're not the same person.

LIU: Exactly.

LING: What is it that drew you into this -- this documentary?

LIU: Well, I had been working with UNICEF since 2004 and I've encountered so many horrific things, especially regarding children, things that you can't even believe. And in these developing countries there is -- there is obviously increasing, there's poverty, there is AIDS, there is illness, there is lack of education and awareness.

But really, what we don't realize is that -- that slavery and sex slavery are endemic everywhere in the world and this is something we don't realize.

It -- I mean in the United States, I think people are seeing that more and more. And it's very important for us to increase our awareness that this is something that's happening in our own back yards. And we use Cambodia, this three (ph) specific women that we followed for four years, and their story to express what has happened to them, even if they were taken by their neighbors and sold or if their parents sold them, it's not a solution that -- that is something that is viable and we have to recognize that there has to be a change.

LING: You mentioned that parents are selling their kids --

LIU: That's right.

LING: -- into trafficking and slavery. How rampant is that?

LIU: It is very normal. There are not -- there is not -- I mean people don't really use contraception in other parts of the world especially in the developing countries. And they are, you know, there's children everywhere. There's rape, there is -- there is slavery. They take children -- a lot of people will take children from villages and use them as sex slaves in wartime, use them as mules to carry things, as chefs.

There was one girl that I met in the Congo who had, I mean it's horrifying but somebody had taken a gun essentially a rifle and shoved it into her -- into her vagina and had destroyed all of, I mean anything that was going to be functional for her. And she had at that point four surgeries and still hadn't been able to improve her ability to function as a human being, without being, you know, incontinent. And unfortunately, because of that, people also banish them and ex- communicate them from their villages.

And it is something that she actually had not been in control of. It was not really her responsibility that somebody came and raped her and shoved this rifle into her, and destroyed her parts and then she was banished from her community. So she was alone, terrified, a child.

And children, who are raped at the age of four, cannot have this surgery until they grow up, so they have to live with this all their lives and then a lot of them try to commit suicide because of that.

LING: We have to take a break and when we come back, an expert in modern-day slavery will join us and what he knows will shock you.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take a mile -- take a motorcycle for two hours up into the mountains, you hike for another four hours up. And there you find a village where every single family has lost at least one child to slavery.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LING: Welcome back to LARRY KING LIVE. I'm Lisa Ling sitting in for Larry tonight.

We're talking about human trafficking and that clip is part of an upcoming National Geographic documentary on human trafficking directed by Nico San Marino (ph). The material is provided exclusively to LARRY KING LIVE.

And our next guest, Ben Skinner is part of the documentary. You just saw him in Haiti which has one of the highest concentrations of slaves in the world. He's the author of "A Crime so Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern Day Slavery". And in the course of his research he has infiltrated human trafficking networks in over a dozen countries. He's a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

And Ben, we're talking about modern day slavery. Can you just define it for us?

BEN SKINNER, AUTHOR, "A CRIME SO MONSTROUS": Sure. It's a critical question, because when people think of slavery, they think of it often as a metaphor. If you look up in Merriam Webster dictionary for example, the first definition is drudgery or toil.

Well, for as many as 27 million people in the world today it's no metaphor. Slaves are those forced to work, held through fraud under threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence. And by that mere definition there are more slaves today than in any point in human history.

LING: Now, how is that possible? How can it be more slaves today than during the transatlantic slave trade?

SKINNER: Well, first of all you have to look at the fact that there are 1.1 billion people living on less than $1 a day. Now, they're not all slaves, but they are extraordinarily vulnerable to the lure of traffickers.

Traffickers will come, they will find families that are suffering from desperate, withering poverty, that can't afford health care, that can't afford education, that can't afford basic credit for the needs of life.

And they say, "Mami, Papi, I know your child is starving, I know, one of your children is dying of an easily preventable disease. I can provide the medicines, I can provide food. All that I ask is that you give me your child for some light labor in a bar, in a restaurant, in a home."

And once those traffickers get a hold of those children, those children are put into slavery, and they are in many cases raped.

LING: Lucy and I were talking about how parents can sell their children into slavery. It's sort of unknowing, though, they do it unknowingly.

SKINNER: Yes, you know. In five, six years of travel for this -- for this book and after that, I found, I actually never talked to a parent who -- who sold their child. What I saw over and over again were parents that made this devil's choice between watching their children slowly starve or die of a preventable disease or giving their child away to a trafficker and an unknown fate.

LING: So they think they're actually sending their kid to have a better life.

SKINNER: And what these traffickers do is they use the most venal leverage which is the love of a parent for a child to pry that child from the parent and to put that child into slavery. And when they're in slavery, they are disposable.

LING: I read in your book that during the slave trade in the American South in the 1800s, people were being sold for the equivalent of about -- of about $40,000 in today's dollars.

How much are human beings being sold for today?

SKINNER: You know, one reason why I take this story so personally is because it is personal to me. On four continents, I witnessed the negotiations for the sale of human beings. Just this summer, I was researching a story that will be coming out in "Time" magazine shortly.

Now, this story is on sex trafficking around the world, (INAUDIBLE) in South Africa and as part of that story I was offered two girls for $45 each -- 15-year-old girls, to buy outright and to do whatever I wished with. This is -- this is a profound devaluation of human life that has happened over the last 150 years.

LING: Ashley, tell us about some of the work that you've done in this area of trafficking and slavery.

JUDD: Well, I just wanted to add something very quickly, because sex slavery in particular is highly gendered. And while there are many families who unintentionally sell their children into sex slavery, there are some who do so knowingly, because of the disposability of girls. And unfortunately, that's a really raw fact.

For example, when I arrived in Thailand, there was a story of a family who had been tricked to sell to an uncle one of their girls. And when they actually followed on the child and discovered the amount of money she was earning for the pimp and the madam, they demanded a larger share of that money, knowing full well that the child was being sold for sex.

They felt they were the ones who had in fact been deceived in some way because the price they had originally been paid for her was less than what she was bringing in to the pimp and the madam.

So there's a heavily gendered component to this. And I do think that you know, some say that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. Well, it rests on the oldest depression in the world which is the oppression of girls and women.

LING: The global sex trafficking trade is a multibillion-dollar mega business in Cambodia and other countries. The enslavement of small children can generate big profits. "Red Light" narrated by Lucy Liu, looks at the ugly economics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The cost of human beings is now so low the maintenance costs are very low, you feed them almost next to nothing. You don't waste any money on the medical care, and you keep piling on the clients so 10, 15, 20 clients per day per night is not unusual. And (INAUDIBLE) only takes two or three weeks to earn back the entire purchase price for this slave and after that it's a gravy train.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LING: What's it like to be a child and sold for sex? Meet a survivor who is brave enough to talk about it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JUDD: Even though the woman with whom I met in Indian terms makes a decent living, she has even less control over her own life than her poor counterparts in (INAUDIBLE). She knows many women in this higher strata of commercial sex workers who when they have tested positive have disappeared but not before they have passed HIV on to their more affluent clients.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LING: That was India's "Hidden Plague" with Ashley Judd.

Welcome back. I'm Lisa Ling sitting in for Larry tonight.

We're talk being modern day slavery. And if you think it's not happening here in the U.S. you are very, very wrong.

Joining us now is a child sex trafficking survivor. She's Caroline Germann and we credit her for speaking up publicly about something so personal and tragic.

Caroline, thank you so much for being here. What happened to you?

CAROLINE GERMANN, CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING SURVIVOR: It all started when I was five years old. I was molested by a neighbor, and from then on I just never felt like I fit in, in my home life. It was very difficult.

So I started running away early on, and started running away to places where there was a lot of grown men. And so I just started -- I always felt like the type of relationship that I was supposed to have with a man ever since I was molested was a sexual relationship.

So these men preyed on that. And also I didn't have very good self- esteem, so I would go to these house parties or even at school, older men would come there and find girls and ask them to come to these parties.

So eventually I just started having sex when I'd run away for a place to sleep. I then was taken into the Child Protective Services, and went from foster home to group home until I was 18 years old. And during that time I continued to run away from home and every time it was an older man that would take me in. He would provide me a place to stay, food, clothes, whatever I needed.

Eventually, I aged out of the system and still didn't have any job skills; still thought that the only way I could survive was to be in a relationship and usually they were pretty abusive.

I started working in a strip club when I was 20, and that led to a cocaine addiction. And after I became addicted to drugs, that's when I started working in the escort services, which eventually led me to Kansas City, to work on Independence Avenue. And I had a pimp and I lived in a house with eight other girls, some of them were underage at the time.

And -- LING: Was the pimp forcing you to prostitute?

GERMANN: There was times when he would set a quota, like look, we have rent that has to be paid or look, it's Christmastime and I know you guys want nice things, so here's the amount that you have to have. I always tried to be the closest to him, but I was also the one who he made examples out of because he knew that I hadn't had any contact with my family. He knew that I had some trouble with the law and so I wasn't going to turn him in, because that meant that I would have to go, too. So I always tried to be the closest.

LING: Was he violent?

GERMANN: Yes, there was a lot of times that were, that was really violent. If a guy followed you, a john followed you to the house, he would make an example out of you, and punch you in the face or --

LING: And did you bring home any of the money that you were working so hard to make?

GERMANN: No, and there was so much psychological brainwash that I willingly handed it over, like I was proud to give him my money.

LING: So every cent went to the pimp?

GERMANN: Every single dime went to him.

Towards the end, there were occasions where I would hold money back but this is because I had moved out of the house with the other girls, and we had our own house. So I would use the items to buy stuff for the house, like toilet paper, and things like that.

LING: A lot of people don't consider that slavery, because these are girls that are actively soliciting sex. But the reality is it is slavery. I mean in Caroline's case, how could you call it anything other than slavery.

BEN SKINNER, AUTHOR, "A CRIME SO MONSTROUS": Sure. I mean if you're talking about people who are forced to work, beaten when they don't perform, can't walk away from their jobs, that's slavery.

It's important to point out that according to the International Labor Organization, of the -- the International Labor Organization estimates that there are 12.3 million slaves in the world. These are the numbers that we know, the very baseline estimate is 12.3 million. And of those 12.3 million, less than 10 percent are held in commercial sex.

The vast majority are held in agriculture, they're held in domestic servitude, they're held in rock quarries, in fisheries, in shrimping industry.

To bring this right home, there's a good chance that you have slavery in your house right now, in the very room that you're watching this program on. You have slavery in the metals that are pulled out of and are processed in Brazil, in the Congo. You have slavery in cotton that's made in Uzbekistan. The slavery that takes place in the world today touches all of our lives, whether we know it or not.

LING: Lucy, what happens to the victims of global sex trafficking? Do they ever find a way out? Can they find a way out?

LIU: They can find a way out, but the numbers are very slim. I mean, people who are rehabilitated -- I think a lot of people attempt rehabilitation but I'm not sure after the damage, the psychological and emotional damage that is, that basically changes their life and it changes their blood system almost. And their spirit has been crushed, and it's very rare that they will come back and be able to maintain a regular life.

I think that we have to note that the seed of this is generally from social problems. A lot of broken homes create runaway children. Runaway children are incredibly vulnerable and these men or these women -- both -- they prey on these children who are unaware and lost and they either become their boyfriends or they become their family and they trust them and that's what happens. I think we all have our families but we have our own families we create on our own.

And I think this is something that happens everywhere. In other developing countries, they prey on young children and they -- because virginity is something that is sought after, and is paid for. And once they are sold as a virgin, what will happen many times is they'll sell them six or seven times and they'll continue to re-sew these girls and have them go back out and sell them as virgins again. And that is the biggest profit for them.

And once these girls are broken down emotionally, and have been raped, they acquiesce to -- unfortunately to the men who have taken over their lives.

LING: We'll have more about the sex slave traffic right here in the U.S. when we come back. You're watching LARRY KING LIVE.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As part of his rehabilitation, Lynn is participating in a play about trafficking at a local NGO.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: After the play, Socorro (ph) meets with Lynn's mother to discuss his progress.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (speaking in foreign language): I knew how much he suffers --

(CRYING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LISA LING, GUEST HOST: That was another clip from Lucy Liu's "Redlight."

Caroline, I want to ask you a question about what happens to foreign girls when they are found to be involved in the sex trade in America versus what happens to American girls.

CAROLINE GERMANN, CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING SURVIVOR: Well, what I've seen is usually, they have a human trafficking task force that will come in, and they'll offer supportive services to these women. From the minute that either the vice squad comes in and makes the arrest of the traffickers, there's a support for the foreign national victims. Not only that, but they'll provide visas and health care and whatever else to get the foreign nationals back on their feet.

With American victims what we typically see is the girls automatically go to jail. They're considered prostitution rings or gangs or criminals. But never have I seen -- I don't want to say never -- but very rarely do you see it where they are considered victims.

So, they'll go to jail, which is usually 180 days, and that's a good break for them. They actually appreciate that. But then when they get out, they weren't given any job skills, they weren't given any health resources. And then they get right back out and they have to go right back to the same thing over and over and over again.

And so, that's the difference I've seen.

LING: Why are American girls, who have been forced to be involved in the sex trade, who have been exploited, why are they treated as criminals in this country?

ASHLEY JUDD, ACTRESS & ACTIVIST: Well, I'd love to give an example of that because there's a really great woman in Atlanta called Deborah Richardson. And she was in a courtroom for an unrelated matter when a 10-year-old child was being prosecuted for having sex with a 42 years old man in the back of a van.

Now, the man was let off because, at the time, that was not really a criminal offense in the state of Georgia. It was a misdemeanor, the same as a traffic violation, OK? This is obviously an egregious abuse of human rights.

And it's -- to the point I was making earlier about how we have to stop re-victimizing the victim and place the focus particularly the criminal offense on the demand side. And what we do with the victims is refer them to social services, get them the psych/social support they need, get them the health care they need, and not make them into serial criminals. And the cycle of -- just as Caroline was saying -- arrest, release and re-arrest is incredibly expensive.

And when, in fact, we start to penalize and criminalize the men who are demanding for this sex, we generate income that then can finance the social programs that support the healing and reintegration of those who have been victimized.

LING: We have to take a break and we'll then be joined by a woman who was kidnapped in Mexico. She tells her harrowing story after the break.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIA SUAREZ, SEX SLAVERY SURVIVOR: This man was a lecher. Nine- year-old girls that he was bringing to him and he was having sex with those little girls. And no one ever said anything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. We're going to get back to LARRY KING in just a moment. But I'm Don Lemon here at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.

We are following breaking news, a developing story, this hour out of northern Mexico and southern California, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake has struck Baja, California. There are reports of injuries, no word on how many of them. A report that one person has been killed, has not been confirmed.

Witnesses say the quake lasted about 30 seconds, knocking items off of store shelves and sending shoppers running towards the exits. It was strong enough to slosh out of -- the water out of swimming pools and the quake was felt all the way into Arizona and north to Los Angeles. But L.A. appears to have avoided major damage.

Captain Steve Ruda of the Los Angeles Fire Department has this advice for L.A. residents. Listen up.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

CAPT. STEVE RUDA, LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPT. (via telephone): Once again, Mother Nature has sent all Los Angeles firefighters out into the communities, out into the streets. Our helicopters are flying overhead, checking our infrastructures. A couple of Web sites people can check, Resolve to be Ready, MySafeLA.com -- those are preparation sites that people can look at, to give people an opportunity to talk about, now, as a family, we're all together today, what do we do in case of an emergency?

(END AUDIO CLIP)

LEMON: Well, the quake and the aftershocks shook buildings all across southern California. I want you to look and listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, IREPORT)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is it still going?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm going outside.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's still going.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm going outside.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Well, that video is coming to us from iReporter Vanessa Rodriguez in Hemet, California. You can see the chandelier shaking in her house and the pool water running over the edge with water in it. Some pretty frightening moments there.

Again, no one was injured there but we are following other reports trying to track down information to check on the possibility of someone who died and more injuries.

I'm Don Lemon. The latest on the quake at the top of the hour -- top to the hour, 10:00 p.m. Eastern.

Now more of CNN's LARRY KING LIVE right now.

LING: We are talking about human trafficking on this edition of LARRY KING LIVE. I'm Lisa Ling, sitting in for Larry.

Tonight, Maria Suarez has an incredible story to tell. It's her own account of being kidnapped in Mexico.

Maria, welcome to the show.

Now, I know you came to the United States in 1976 filled with hopes and dreams. What happened to you?

MARIA SUAREZ, SEX SLAVERY SURVIVOR: Well, as a young girl and being -- I will say ignorant and not understanding the meaning of what other people had no in mind. I was offered a job, the job consisting of cleaning house and answering the phone, which it was going to be with an old couple. This old couple, I ended up going there.

I'm going to make it short, I ended up going there and I met the man, my trafficker. He was OK. I met him and I noticed that in the house, the woman who had brought me, they left me in there and the house, it's -- the windows, the doors are surrounded by extra locks, locks and on the windows, extra locks. And the phone had a lock, everything.

So, right away I felt something was wrong but I didn't know how to distinguish those feelings. So, after that, I was in there and when I wanted to go home, between him and the woman, they didn't let me. They actually wanted for me to stay there and I let my family know that I was going to stay there, that I had found a job. My family was very unhappy, but still I got to stay there.

Well after three days of being in the house, I was raped by this man. But before he raped me he told me that he had bought me for $200 and I was there to -- I was his slave for him to do to me whatever he wants to do to me.

LING: Did you think that this could happen in the United States? I mean, you came to the United States with the hopes of opportunities. SUAREZ: I never thought that that could happen in here. I never thought if -- that didn't happen in my little village. I didn't thought that this country was going to be like that.

But unfortunately, we have people that are very sick, and they don't respect other people's lives. Especially a young person, just coming out of their -- I was 15. I was not even 16.

So, actually I felt that -- I felt like a rose bud, that I was just opened up and this man cut me off the bush and throw me on the floor and step on me -- destroy my whole life, my dreams and everything.

LING: What happened to this man?

SUAREZ: This man got killed by the -- by one of his young couple that he had on one of the little garage in the back. He turned it into an apartment, and he was wanting to have -- to get the young girl.

This man was a lecher. And not only he was a lecher, he was a pedophile because he had a lot of other little girls, 9-year-old girls, that he was bringing to him, and he was having sex with those little girls. And no one ever said anything.

The police whom (INAUDIBLE) knew what was happening to -- with this little, this man with these little girls and they didn't do anything. My family reported me with the police, telling them that they feel that I was there against my will. The police didn't do anything.

When this man got killed, after I was being raped, tortured, different ways, emotional, sexually, physical, and spiritual by this man, after five years, he got killed. After he got killed, I was sent to prison for 25 to life. I did 23 years.

LING: And why were you sent to prison, Maria?

SUAREZ: I was sent to prison because, actually, when this man got killed, the young guy that killed the old man told me to put the piece of wood under the house, which I did it. I put the piece of wood under the house, and that was my crime.

LING: So you had to serve over 20 years in prison after being forced into sex slavery. How did you -- how did you deal with that?

SUAREZ: Today, I cannot tell that I'm proud of being in prison, but I can tell you that I was free. I was free out of the men. I was out of his hands. And prison, I was using it as a learning process. I got the chance to educate myself, to learn English, which I didn't know English before.

LING: So, you actually felt that prison -- you actually felt that prison was -- provided you with more freedom than when you weren't in prison? Under the control of this man?

SUAREZ: This man had controlled me by everything -- every strength of my body was just the fear. I feared this man like you have no idea, the way -- how he used to tell me how he was going to kill my family, how he was going to kill me, how he was going to burn my family's house. My life, my whole will was in his hands.

So, yes, that fear on this man was very, very strong.

LING: Maria and Caroline are -- have become advocates. They're on the front lines trying to combat this.

How often do you see that -- people who have been victimized now wanting to change the system?

BEN SKINNER, AUTHOR, "A CRIME SO MONSTROUS": You know, Maria is one of the most courageous people that I've ever met in my life. But she's not the only survivor that I've met, who has gone on to defy the inhumanity that they suffered by helping others demand their own humanity.

You see this time and time again. It's the tradition of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. It's slaves that understand the monstrosity that is modern day slavery, and stand up and demand their own humanity and advocate for others.

Caroline and Maria are doing it very courageously here tonight. I profile others in my book "A Crime So Monstrous" who, again, refuse to be defined by their bondage.

LING: Incredible courage. The violent details of the sex slave industry from another survivor. That's in 60 seconds. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LING: As we've discussed, not all human trafficking involves sexual slavery. It includes domestic servitude and other forms of forced labor.

Here's another clip provided exclusive to LARRY KING LIVE from the upcoming National Geographic documentary on the modern slave trade. It's part of the personal story of a Chinese woman who was sold as a child and then taken to California.

Please watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She starts opening the door and the customers come in. I'm scared, I'm shy, because I don't know how to speak English. She just hit me, my face or wherever, and then she kicked me.

And every time she hit me, she -- mad at me for no reason. She just grab the toilet brush, toilet brush, pulled my mouth and then grabbed my hair like very hard, and then put my mouth, like turned and put it, the toilet brush. Put it in my mouth.

Every time I would just say, in the corner, I can kill myself. It's OK. You'll be better tomorrow. It's OK. Tomorrow will be better.

But it's not. It's the same thing every day. (END VIDEO CLIP)

LING: What's the United States doing to combat human trafficking? Our next guests have some answers when LARRY KING LIVE returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LING: Can anyone stop human trafficking? The answer isn't so simple as our next guest will tell us.

Luis Cdebaca is ambassador at large for the State Department's office to monitor and combat trafficking persons. And Alejandro Mayorkas is director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security.

Ambassador, I'll start with you. First of all, how daunting is it? Ben was saying that there are more slaves inhabiting the planet now than ever before in history. How daunting a task is it?

AMBASSADOR LUIS CDEBACA, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: You know, every time you feel like giving you, you see a survivor like you've had on the show tonight people who are able to rise above what happened to them, and I think that that's what gives us hope. At the end of the day, we're talking about something that can be solved. It can be stopped -- with engagement from governments, from people, from your viewers.

If we really stop and think about how does slavery affect us, how does slavery affect our everyday lives as consumers, how do we reduce the demand and then, also, how do we insist on, you know, strict enforcement of these laws, we can end slavery in the 21st century.

LING: And, Alejandro, how does human trafficking -- does it affect our national security?

ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Well, we're dealing with a criminal element that impacts people here in the United States. The tentacles of these organizations reach into the United States very deeply. This is, therefore, a high priority of Secretary Napolitano. It is a prioritization that is mirrored by the dedication of Secretary Clinton, and, of course, President Obama.

LING: What happens to foreign slaves when they're found in the United States?

MAYORKAS: We have very significant resources to bring to bear for the assistance of victims of human trafficking. We have a victim assistance program in the short-term that is provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And we also have visa protection in the long run, the T and U visas that enable people who have come here, the foreign-born, to seek the protection of the United States as a sanctuary.

LING: Ambassador, human trafficking is a multibillion dollar business. Why is it so profitable?

CDEBACA: I think that one of the reasons why human trafficking is so profitable is because unlike so many of the other things that criminals do, this is a situation where you can continue to exploit the person that you have as a slave.

As you heard from the survivors on the show, there's a psychological manipulation, where it's not simply beating them and preventing them from running off. It's also getting them to the point where they actually, in some perverse way, want to serve you.

We're understanding this a lot more, I think, because of what's been done in the last three decades or so over domestic violence and battering. We're understanding that the exploitation happens over and over again -- sometimes for five, 10, even 15 years.

LING: We've sort of been talking around this issue, but who are the traffickers? Who are the people who are actually moving human beings across continents, within our country?

CDEBACA: You know, it's interesting, there's not necessarily one profile. For every case we get, which involves, say, for instance, the stereotypical, you know, Russian-organized crime boss or something like that, you have an opportunistic, abusive employer, who sees that they have people who are vulnerable. Not just because they're illegal aliens or because they're runaway U.S. citizens, but some other type of vulnerability. And they'll take advantage of that.

There was a case a few years ago in Kansas where an American doctor who had his victims basically given to him by the state of Kansas under the guise of giving them rehabilitation services, and he put them to work, enslaved them on a farm that he owned. It's very similar to the case that just happened in Mexico City.

So, I think that we see the offender profile, at the end of the day, we're looking at a vulnerable victim and somebody who is willing to cross that line into enslaving someone else.

LING: And, Alejandro, what should the government -- the U.S. government's obligation be to try and combat this globally?

MAYORKAS: Well, we have a three-part strategy, if I can summarize it. And the overarching message of that strategy is one of collaboration. One is, of course, to dismantle the trafficking organizations and we work collaboratively with our federal, state, local, tribal partners here, domestically, as well as law enforcement internationally. And so, we work with them to dismantle the organizations.

We come to the aid of victims and we do that collaboratively with nongovernmental agencies, as well as with our partners in government, such as the health and human services.

And the third part is really to educate, educate victims with respect to their rights. Educate the public with respect to their shared responsibility and the ability to identify victims and assist them.

LING: Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us.

We'll have reaction from Lucy Liu, Ashley Judd and others when we come back.

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LING: As we close the show, I just wonder if you have final thoughts.

Ashley, let's go to you first.

JUDD: Well, I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to be here and I especially appreciate the contribution of the gentleman from the administration, and I celebrate the United States' leadership in this issue.

I am concerned that so few victims of trafficking are actually accessing the special visas that we have available to them. I believe the number, it's absolutely minuscule. It might even be fewer than 20, and I think it's tied to the fact that victims are asked to testify against their traffickers, who, as Maria said, have threatened to kill their families back home. And then there's the real danger when they are sent back home.

So, I would like to challenge the administration to keep working very progressively on this issue and thank Americans for getting involved.

LING: Ben?

SKINNER: Absolutely. You know, just to piggyback on that -- a big part of the problem is that this is not a funded fight. Over the last nine years, the federal outlays, the federal budget for the traffic in illegal human beings has been less than 1 percent of the federal outlays for the traffic in illegal drugs last year alone. So, we're talking about a minuscule budget.

Alejandro and Luis need more tools. And in a democracy, this is all of our responsibility.

LING: Good answer. Lucy?

LUCY LIU, ACTRESS & ACTIVIST: I think that social awareness is the first thing that we need to do. We need to have that. We need to educate ourselves and other people. That's really the core.

It's about social networking and having those groups for people to go to, as other countries that don't even acknowledge that this exists. And I think we can't have any sort of help come to them if we don't even -- if we pretend this is not happening in our world, especially in the United States.

LING: Well, thank you all for being with us in this very illuminating hour and hopefully we've really raised awareness tonight. So, thank you all. Thank you to our guests.

And thanks, Larry, for letting me sit in tonight.