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These days, Kachepa and Shepherd are an unlikely duo: a freed modern-day slave and his reluctant liberator. They travel nationally, advising other victims of human trafficking, pushing lawmakers to make enforcement of antislavery laws a true priority, and speaking at antislavery events.

They combat an ancient scourge that has never really gone away. Two hundred years after William Wilberforce campaigned to abolish the slave trade within the British Empire, slavery continues. Experts estimate there are 27 million slaves worldwide today, probably more than at any time in human history. About 17,000 are trafficked annually into the United States.

"They are not slaves in a metaphorical sense," notes International Justice Mission founder Gary Haugen. "They are held in forced servitude by other human beings."

Shepherd, Kachepa, and Haugen are part of an alliance of modern Wilberforces. This alliance is both ordinary and extraordinary—each person deeply challenged by modern slavery and willing to pay the high price of personal involvement.

Their ranks include lawmakers, clergy, lawyers, bureaucrats, missionaries, social workers, and even reclusive Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz. He bankrolled the new feature film Amazing Grace, which chronicles Wilberforce's life.

Modern-day slave trading, called human trafficking, funnels slaves into two types of forced servitude: sex and labor.

Sex slavery can include prostitution, pornography, stripping, lap dancing, live sex shows, and phone sex. Traffickers force labor slaves into farming, sewing, brick making, camel jockeying, cigarette rolling, domestic servitude, waging war—even singing hymns in churches. About 80 percent of slaves are women or children such as Kachepa.

"If you can make money from a choir, there's a criminal who might want to try that," said Kevin Bales, a Quaker sociology professor at a London university. Still, the enslaved gospel choir took the cake for Bales, founder of Free the Slaves and author of Disposable People.

"That one flipped me, and I thought I'd heard everything," Bales said of Grimes.

Between the 1700s and 1860s, lawmakers banned slave trade and ownership in Europe and the Americas. In 1948, the United Nations condemned it in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Worldwide, many Christians have considered the victory complete and have found other causes to champion. The laws, however, merely drove slavery underground, and some nations do not enforce existing laws.

Modern slavery thrives through deception and secrecy. Traffickers lure millions of victims through lies, fraud, and coercion. A trafficker may offer to smuggle someone into a nation for legitimate work, such as becoming a waitress or nanny. Later, the unsuspecting target discovers the evil bait-and-switch: The actual labor is sinister and exploitive, with no pay, insane hours, and physical brutality.

By then, escape is nearly impossible. Traffickers confiscate passports. They relocate captives where they cannot speak the local language. In one infamous case, police caught traffickers after they had enslaved 1,000 mute or deaf Mexicans, whom they had lured into the U.S. to beg.

Traffickers instill hopelessness through violence and death threats against the slave or his or her family members. Bribed law enforcement officials look the other way.

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March 2007, Vol. 51, No. 3