Wounded Warrior

For many years Benny Yu couldn’t remember any of his early childhood. When the memories finally returned he was overwhelmed with pain. But God has helped him put the terrible suffering of his early years to amazing use.

Warning – This story contains details of abuse and exploitation, including child sexual abuse.

‘My parents tried to give me everything that they never could have for themselves,’ explains Benny Yu. His mother and father had emigrated from Korea which had been ravaged by war, to California. They worked hard to provide for their son – so hard, in fact that the young Benny became a latchkey kid.

His parents, keen for him to learn music, hired a neighbour to teach him the cello. Between the ages of eight and nine, the teacher abused and raped him repeatedly. Not only did Benny never mention the incidents to his parents, he blotted them from his memory as a coping mechanism.

Digging into darkness

‘When fellow students at university talked about their first day at school, I was like, oh that's impossible, no one remembers that,’ remembers Benny. It set him wondering ‘Everything was very clear in my childhood after we moved away from that house so I said, there must have been something that happened there.’

As he started excavating the buried memories, a deep pain and then a dark depression descended on him. He sought therapy at college and God began a long healing process in his life. However, along with the healing came a powerful challenge that would transform his life.

After marrying and starting a family, Benny moved to Mexico as a missionary. It was there he first learned about the realities of human trafficking, with an estimated 27 million people in modern day slavery, including 7-8 million children.

‘God started speaking to me as I started doing the research. I reflected upon my pain and I said okay, I'm going to protect my own children. But God said to me, “Benny, you didn't go through that pain just to protect your own children. You went through that pain so that I can become a platform to show my power to the world.”’

Shortly after, he set up El Pozo de Vida, a non-profit organisation based in Mexico, dedicated to ending human trafficking and modern day slavery. He had to swiftly modify his plans for the charity as he learned more about the situation. ‘I initially thought, okay, I'm gonna go in there, in Hollywood style. I'm gonna kick down doors of brothels and rescue girls, you know, in the name of Jesus.’

No easy answers

Benny soon learned that even if he were to rescue them, there was no place for the girls to live. So he set about opening the first of several aftercare homes. Gradually the work of El Pozo de Vida expanded as he realised that dealing with such an enormous issue requires a whole host of different responses.

‘The homes led to a outreach project in the prostitution district of Mexico City. Then that led into prevention work in schools – because the average age of these girls being trafficked was 13-15. Then that led into doing more intervention work, helping women coming out of prostitution and getting them jobs, so we have our vocational training programme.’

Pozo de Vida expanded as he realised that dealing with such an enormous issue requires a whole host of different responses.

‘The homes led to a outreach project in the prostitution district of Mexico City. Then that led into prevention work in schools – because the average age of these girls being trafficked was 13-15. Then that led into doing more intervention work, helping women coming out of prostitution and getting them jobs, so we have our vocational training programme.’

The work of El Pozo de Vida now extends well beyond Mexico – mirroring the approach of the traffickers themselves, who are no respecter of national borders. Meanwhile, he has also launched a new organisation, 27 million; which seeks to network and resource other grassroots anti-trafficking groups around the world.

Whilst juggling all this work, Benny admits it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by the scale of the problem – in Mexico City alone he estimates that sex is bought around three million times every day. Most of those ‘transactions’ are with women who have been trafficked.

Shaping minds, telling stories 

He’s convinced that prevention work is the best hope they have of making a significant dent in those figures. ‘We need to focus in on 10-20 years from now; to shape the mindset of the young people. We go into the schools and the preparatory schools to help them understand the issue of human trafficking, prostitution, sexual abuse, and pornography.’