To the editor,

River Falls might have a small theater, but its showings are big, especially the movie Sound of Freedom.  

Unfortunately, mainstream media “professionals" that tear the film to pieces to kill ticket sales are pathetically small-minded. Can they seriously not tell the difference between legitimate need to stop worldwide child sex trafficking and fictional posturing to fundraise?   

To get a PG-13 rating, the filmmakers had to avoid visualizing and describing the traumatic damages done to the bodies and souls of an estimated 22 million victims from 0 to 16 years old who are enslaved by depraved adults. Used many times a day until they're no longer useful, they then are thrown out on the streets or used for organ harvesting.  Only the godless can minimize this.

Does some fictionalization for storytelling reasons mean that statistics are also fictional? Check it out online. More than 500,000 children a year go missing in the U.S., where we are first in sex trafficking. Over a fourth of all human trafficking victims are children. Online, a half million sexual predators are trolling each day and in 2021, 252, 000 websites contained sexually abused children in images or videos. Should we turn away and let others "fix" the causes?

An estimated 85,000 unaccompanied minors have disappeared in this country in the two years that our immigration containment systems have been hobbled. Border cities are filled with hidden victims and border patrol agents are overwhelmed with unaccompanied minors.  Only lawmakers and adequate law enforcement can turn these situations around.

Closer to home familiarize yourself with this: Wisconsin Child Sex Trafficking and Exploitation Indicator and Response Guide And this: AG Kaul Announces Wisconsin Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force | Wisconsin Department of Justice (state.wi.us). Paying close attention can save lives and souls.

Donna O’Keefe

Town of River Falls