Special Report: "Trade of Innocents"

11/22/2011
KGET.com (Bakersfield, California, USA)

Human trafficking. It's illegal, and it's big business.

According to the International Human Rights Group, it's a $15 billion a year global industry.

The U.S. Justice Department estimates that in this country alone, nearly 300,000 children are at risk of becoming victims of commercial prostitution.

This spring, a full-length feature film will hit movie theaters, shining a bright light on the darkest side of human trafficking... the child sex slave trade.

The movie is shot in Thailand, but the setting is the back streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

And, this is a movie with roots stretching all the way back to Bakersfield.

Mira Sorvino and Dermot Mulroney star in "Trade of Innocents."

They play an American couple, still reeling from the abduction and murder of their child, now drawn into the lives of young girls being exploited for sex in southeast Asia.

It's an issue close to Sorvino's heart as a U.N. Ambassador to the Office on Drugs and Crime.

"It just has to be something that we as a world of caring individuals, of moral people, say no to and really get active about it rather than just deploring it and then walking away," said Sorvino.

Dermot Mulroney plays an investigator who poses as a child sex tourist, intent on breaking up the crime ring that runs the sex slave industry, an acting experience that became in large part, a life experience.

"It's an issue that needs to be attacked from every direction, from the child to the government itself. The truth is that there are organizations out there doing this, and what they need is more money, more help, more people, more awareness. Because I'm one of those people, I didn't know about this until I took this role," said Mulroney.

The setting is Cambodia.

UNICEF says southeast Asia, especially the Mekong region, is a hotbed for child sex tourism.

"Trade of Innocents" exposes the criminal element and those who've committed themselves to fighting it.

Jim Schmidt of Bakersfield is co-producer of the film.

Dr. Bill Bolthouse is bankrolling the movie. Yes, he's part of the Bolthouse farming family.

The production financing came from Valley Republic Bank.

"I never went in to the ag business. My father just told me do what God wants you to do, and so I actually went into medicine," explained Bolthouse.

This soft-spoken physician from Colorado became aware of the sex slave trade four years ago during a humanitarian mission to set up a hospital in Cambodia.

"So I was there doing medical work, but I took my whole family with me. And, it was a chance for my girls, who were 11, 11 and 9, to interact face to face with girls, much their same age, who had just been brought out of forced prostitution," added Bolthouse.

In 2009, a filmmaker friend of Bolthouse approached him about making a movie about child sex trafficking.

Bolthouse was eventually put in touch with Bakersfield's Jim Schmidt, a producer for Dean River Productions.

"And, it just became clear that not only we could make this movie for him, but we were like-minded, that our heartbeat was the same in terms of wanting the issue to be put out there," said Schmidt.

And, the common cause that binds these two men and their families, is to expose the child sex trade and to pay tribute to those in law enforcement trying to fight it.

"There's really no one out there who's done this at a feature film level with major talent to really expose the issue. But, people don't go to the movies to be educated or preached at. They go to be entertained at the end of the day, even if it's a dramatic impactful story like this. And, so there's a great dramatic story on top, on a bedrock of reality," explained Schmidt.

For Bill Bolthouse and his family, "Trade of Innocents" is an extension of their passion for engaging in health care and humanitarian causes, from Africa to the Baltics.

"Our family wants to be a blessing to others and to help those less fortunate," he said.

"Trade of Innocents" shines a harsh light on the web of social forces that fuel the child trafficking trade. The film is set in Cambodia, but those in the know will tell you the child sex slave trade is not exclusive to southeast Asia. It's happening right in our own backyards.

"It happens within blocks of where we are right now in Santa Monica," said Bolthouse. "It happens in Bakersfield, in Denver. Children are being sold for sex. You can get an underage girl delivered to your house for sex almost faster than you can have a pizza delivered in most major cities in the U.S."

We checked with local law enforcement, including the FBI, and officials say right now they are not working any investigations involving child sex trafficking in Kern County.

"Trade of Innocents" hits movie theaters next spring.