On April 11th Creative Mornings Denver welcomes Kellen Kurtz of Love146. Kellen will talk about their organization and how they’re working to end child trafficking and exploitation.

Background:  In 2002, the co-founders of Love146 traveled to Southeast Asia n an exploratory trip to determine how they could serve in the fight against child sex trafficking. A couple of the co-founders were taken undercover with investigators to a brothel where they witnessed children being sold for sex. This is the story that sparked their movement.

“We found ourselves standing shoulder to shoulder with predators in a small room, looking at little girls through a pane of glass. All of the girls wore red dresses with a number pinned to their dress for identification.

They sat, blankly watching cartoons on TV. They were vacant, shells of what a child should be. There was no light in their eyes, no life left. Their light had been taken from them. These children…raped each night… seven, ten, fifteen times every night. They were so young. Thirteen, eleven… it was hard to tell. Sorrow covered their faces with nothingness.

Except one girl. One girl who wouldn’t watch the cartoons. Her number was 146. She was looking beyond the glass. She was staring out at us with a piercing gaze. There was still fight left in her eyes. There was still life left in this girl…

…All of these emotions begin to wreck you. Break you. It is agony. It is aching. It is grief. It is sorrow. The reaction is intuitive, instinctive. It is unbearable. I remember wanting to break through the glass. To take her away from that place. To scoop up as many of them as I could into my arms. To take all of them away. I wanted to tell her to keep fighting. To not give up. To tell her that we were coming for her…”

But because we went in as part of an ongoing, undercover investigation on this particular brothel, we were unable to immediately respond. Evidence had to be collected in order to bring about a raid and eventually justice on those running the brothel. It is an immensely difficult problem when an immediate response cannot address an emergency. Some time later, there was a raid on this brothel and children were rescued. But the girl who wore #146 was no longer there. We do not know what happened to her, but we will never forget her. She changed the course of all of our lives.” -Rob Morris, President and Co-founder

We have taken her number so that we remember why this all started. So that we must tell her story. It is a number that was pinned to one girl but that represents the millions enslaved. We wear her number with honor, with sorrow, and with a growing hope. Her story can be a different one for so many more.

Love is the foundation of our name because it is our motivating drive to end the trafficking and exploitation of children. We hold true what Martin Luther King Jr. said:  "Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."