The depths of the depravity of human sin are never more blatantly on display than in the horrors of human trafficking.
Tens of thousands of children are caught in the web of sex slavery and trafficking each year. It is a $150 billion dollar industry worldwide.
And it is the focus of actor Jim Caviezel's new movie, "The Sound of Freedom," releasing on July 4th, the day America celebrates its independence.
‘THE SOUND OF FREEDOM’ EXPOSES BRUTAL FIGHT TO SAVE VICTIMS OF CHILD TRAFFICKING
He told Fox's Lighthouse Faith podcast, "I was thinking about my own children."
The film is a reminder that freedom is a hard-fought victory. America won it through a bloody Revolutionary War. Less than a century later, a Civil War would free millions of enslaved African Americans.
But sadly, it did not end the evil of exploiting for gain the poor, the innocent or the destitute — in America or in the world.
In the film, Caviezel plays federal agent Tim Ballard, who quit his job to rescue children from human traffickers. It's an action-packed movie with a heart.
For Caviezel, the film is personal.
"My wife and I adopted three children from China. And I was well aware ... of the problems and dangers that children face globally."
Caviezel is a devout Christian who's probably best known for portraying Jesus in Mel Gibson's film "Passion of the Christ."
He said that this new film exposes the spiritual evil that all people can be complicit in unknowingly — simply by doing nothing.
Said Caviezel, "You have good, and you have evil. It's always been this way. But then you have the group in the middle that are riding the fence. The devil owns the fence."
Caviezel said that last year, 85,000 children went missing. And on April 26, a whistleblower gave testimony to Homeland Security about what was going on in the world of human trafficking.
And yet, said Caviezel, "The next day in the media, nothing … It's as if they didn't want this story to get out there."
Caviezel said that "300,000 children under the age of 18 were lured into the sex trafficking business in the United States. We are the biggest consumers of child trafficking and pornography in the world. The United States — the home of the free, land of the brave. This is ridiculous. And so the film is a threat."
Caviezel worked closely with Ballard to learn the ins and outs of how agents go after traffickers.
But Ballard told him how one encounter with one boy became a game changer.
"He's met with an opportunity when he takes on the worst pedophile trafficker they'd ever seen. And he saves this little boy. And the five-year-old boy says, ‘Will you save my sister?’ So, Ballard goes home, talks to his wife. She sends him out, and he tries to find this little girl. [That's] the basis of the film's story."
And the story becomes so much larger than rescuing one girl.
It opens a Pandora's box of the unspeakable evil that thousands of children are brought into, and how traffickers use the most beguiling means to lure children away from their loving parents.
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Caviezel said this movie, like all the movies he chooses to work on, must have some redemptive quality. That can be a struggle for actors, as Hollywood constantly pumps out products of the exact opposite nature.
But the man who portrayed Jesus on the silver screen — and will again as he teams up with Gibson to make a movie about the resurrection of Jesus — said, "It doesn't mean I'm going to play the good guy, but that the audience comes away with something that challenges them. As I've said before, I don't go to the devil to play the devil. I go to God to tell me who the devil is."
