As patron of AbleChildAfrica I am acutely aware of the challenges faced by many countries through poverty. More recently I have been made aware of another form of insidious crime against innocent young victims involving exploitation, abuse and degradation.

Ruth Beni, Director of Animage Ltd, sent me a video depicting the plight of 2 young girls, Rose and Grace. She asked me to consider composing some music to accompany two animated stories.

As soon as I had time I duly sat down and began watching the videos. I would say I am a fairly worldly-wise person and I am very well aware of many injustices in this world but nothing prepared me for the impact of the stories about the plight of these two young girls – victims of sex trafficking.

It is my understanding the characters featured in this animated film titled A Dangerous Journey are based on real people, coerced as children, out of their homelands and exploited horribly in other countries including the UK. I cannot comprehend the trauma they must have suffered in their very young lives. I cannot begin to assume I know how they feel or how they and countless others will ever lead normal lives. What I do know is I cannot ignore their plight, do nothing, get on with my life or forget what I have seen.

I immediately contacted a composer friend of mine, Philip Sheppard, and we set about writing music to accompany these two animated stories. I hope we did them justice and I hope awareness of crimes like this can be eradicated.

Please watch the video and let me have your thoughts but most of all please send the link to as many people as you can and in doing so hopefully we can reduce incidents of this nature and make our world a better place…

Image: erasi (licence: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)