Documentary Showcase on Scientology Network Draws Back Curtain on World of Child Sex Trafficking by Rebecca Blair
- By WRN Guest --
- 06 Dec 2019 --
The documentary featured on this week’s Scientology Network Documentary Showcase December 6 at 8 p.m. is Operation Toussaint, a film that reveals the stark reality of child sex trafficking in the world today.
Airing just days before the 71st anniversary of the UN’s ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights December 10, the timing is particularly fitting, with this year’s Human Rights Day focusing on child empowerment, since 2019 is also the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Operation Toussaint, produced and directed by 11-time Emmy Award-winning director/producer Nick Nanton, follows former special agent Tim Ballard as he hunts down human traffickers running a child prostitution ring in Haiti. The goal for the operation: to free the children and bring the perpetrators to justice.
“It is estimated that there’s over 2 million children currently forced be sex slaves,” Ballard says. “What kiond of demand justifies these numbers. We intentionally go to the darkest corners of the Earth to find these kids.”
Ballard spent more than a decade as a Special Agent for the Department of Homeland Security where he was assigned to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and deployed as an undercover operative for the U.S. Child Sex Tourism Jump Team.
Then he learned of a boy, a U.S. citizen, who was kidnapped from his father’s church in Utah and trafficked to Haiti.
“I thought that I could make it into a U.S. case and I couldn’t because it wasn’t,” Ballard says. “I had to leave my job because I just had to do something about it.”
Ballard is Founder and CEO of Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), an elite team of former CIA agents and U.S. law enforcement officers who lead coordinated identification and extraction efforts in conjunction with law enforcement throughout the world. Once the victims of human trafficking are rescued, O.U.R. also cares for their rehabilitation.
About the filmmaker
From the slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with special forces raiding a sex trafficking ring and freeing children, to the Virgin Galactic Space Port in Mojave with Sir Richard Branson, 11-time Emmy Award-winning director/producer, Nick Nanton has become known for telling stories that connect. He focuses on the most fascinating subject in the world: People. Nick has shared his message with millions of people through speeches, blogs, lectures, media placements and contributions to more than four dozen best-selling books. Nick has directed more than 50 documentaries and a sold-out Broadway show. He has garnered 25 Emmy nominations and 11 Emmy wins.
About Documentary Showcase
The Scientology Network Documentary Showcase debuts films weekly, providing a platform to independent filmmakers embracing a vision of a better world—filmmakers whose goal is to improve society by raising awareness of social, cultural and environmental issues.
In providing a platform for independent filmmakers who embrace a vision of building a better world, Documentary Showcase forwards the basic beliefs of Scientology. Supporting human rights and those who are doing something effective in society are concepts that are inherent in the Scientology religion, which includes in its creed the belief that “all men of whatever race, color or creed were created with equal rights.” The Code of a Scientologist calls for supporting “true humanitarian endeavors in the fields of human rights,” and embracing “the policy of equal justice for all.” Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard also emphasized the importance of the arts, stating, “A culture is only as great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists.”
Documentary Showcase airs weekly at 8 p.m, ET/PT.