this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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There's a serious "wait, what?!?" here. The church sells slaves?
They might be talking about a mission? Personally wouldn't call that trafficking, but it can be pretty brutal depending on the mission
It is trafficking. Growing up in that church, I still agree with a lot of the stated philosophical beliefs, the actual behavior of most of the community is incredibly disappointing and leans cult-like. The mission isn't inherently trafficking, the religion isn't inherently a cult, but it's not beating the allegations and more within need to call out the members that commit these illegal organized atrocities and make it into a cult.
What the GP describes looks exactly like trafficking.
I was threatened by local leaders and family if I didn't go on a 2 year mission in another country, then when I got there, they:
I didn't want to call it trafficking for a long time. I figured maybe God just had a weird way of doing things. But my spouse works at a recovery center for survivors of violence (including trafficking) and helped me realize that's what it was.
A pretty big misconception is that trafficking has to look like selling slaves, and I agree that's an egregious thing, but it can be a lot more broad than that.
There are a lot of resources at https://humantraffickinghotline.org/en if you're curious. My mission experience checked just about every box for labor trafficking, and I've heard very similar stories from a lot of other people who have been missionaries.
Were you mormon? Or is this more widespread than I thought?
If you are talking about the mormon church, and if what I've heard is correct, you missed an added point that makes it look all the worse. That you had to pay for the right to let them do that to you. Normally in a labour trafficking situation you'd at least be expecting some sort of compensation, even if it's grossly inadequate and ends up largely back in the hands of the traffickers as they charge for accommodation and transport. But from what I've heard, mormons do the labour entirely for free, and pay a large amount for the "honour".
I was mormon. Thankfully my parents paid to traffic me, so I could afford to go to college and cut them off relatively soon after I got home.
Yep, sounds like slavery. Taking your passport away would already be enough.