Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World
Gary Haugen
1999 Intervarsity Press

Terrify No More: Young Girls Held Captive and the Daring Undercover Operation to Win Their Freedom
Gary Haugen
2005 W Publishing Group

Reviewed by David Korb (Nov 2007)

The good news about injustice is that God is against it. Good News is a call to have the courage necessary to follow Christ into the broken arenas of this world. Author Gary Haugen is president and CEO of International Justice Mission. He reminds us that we do not follow a “domesticated God” but a God who is in brothels, prisons, and all places where people are held in bondage. Haugen dares to suggest to us that the God of heaven is present in these violent and abusive places and invites Christians to courageously follow God into these evil contexts.

Haugen writes, “As Christians we have learned much about sharing the love of Christ with people all over the world who have never heard the gospel. We continue to see the salvation message preached in the far corners of the earth and to see indigenous Christian churches vigorously extending Christ’s kingdom on every continent. We have learned how to feed the hungry, heal the sick and shelter the homeless. But there is one thing we haven’t learned to do, even though God’s Word repeatedly calls us to the task. We haven’t learned how to rescue the oppressed. For the child held in forced prostitution, for the prisoner illegally detained and tortured, for the widow robbed of her land, for the child sold into slavery, we have almost no vision of how God could use us to bring tangible rescue. We don’t know how to get the twelve-year-old out of the brothel, how to have the prisoner set free, how to have the widow’s land restored to her or how to get the child slave released and the oppressors brought to justice.”

Haugen worked as a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice and served as director of the United Nations genocide investigation in Rwanda before he founded the International Justice Mission (IJM) to address the issues mentioned in the previous paragraph. The book is divided into three sections. In the first section Haugen opens our eyes to the reality of injustice in our world today. The second section presents four affirmations God makes about justice that should give us hope. The final section provides concrete guidance on how Christians can rescue the oppressed and seek justice throughout the world.

The second book, Terrify No More, contains stories of IJM interventions in many places around the world. The primary story is about IJM’s raid on the brothels in Svay Pak in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The IJM team went undercover to infiltrate the brothels of Svay Pak to identify, video tape, and record conversations with the pimps, brothel owners, and elementary-school-age girls promising to perform specific sexual acts for foreign customers. The book relays in great detail how the raid and rescue mission was planned and carried out. Terrify No More is not a book for the faint of heart. The details are graphic as Haugen gives a real account of what happens when young girls are kidnapped and forced into a life of prostitution.

As the story of Svay Pak unfolds, Haugen weaves in other stories of IJM interventions around the world. In one of these he recounts the saga of Jyoti, a 14 year-old Indian girl who left home to work as a domestic servant in another village. After two months she had saved up enough money to return home to visit her family, but was abducted as she waited at the train station. Her captors drugged her, and when the drugs wore off three days later she found herself in brothel in a major city far from her home. For two months she refused to participate in the sex trade, so the brothel keepers beat her repeatedly, more than 50 times. “Finally the brothel keeper had had enough. Demanding a high price because she was a virgin, she sold Jyoti to an eager customer. Still resistant, Jyoti was beaten on her legs, then pushed violently into the room. …When he was finished with her, the customer paid the brothel keeper about two hundred dollars. Pleased that she had been a virgin, he gave her an additional twenty-two dollar tip. Jyoit took the money and threw it in the face of the brothel keeper.” Jyoti finally decided to give up the fight—outwardly at least—but still watched every day for an opportunity to escape. Over the next three years she was forced to have sex with an average of twenty-five customers a day, for approximately fifteen thousand sexual encounters before her rescue. After her rescue, Jyoti assisted IJM in a raid on that same brothel. More than a half dozen girls were liberated that day.

This book will shock you, make you cry, and break your heart as it opens your eyes to the horrors faced by girls as young as eight years old. It will also give you an idea of what it takes to rescue these girls and young women from their abusers. Going beyond the tales of rescues, Haugen also talks candidly about the necessity and challenges of aftercare.

Tucked in the midst of these tales of terror is the reminder that God—the God of the Bible—is in these places. We hate to think of our holy God being there in the room when these unspeakable things are happening to girls like Jyoti, but our God is there. Gary Haugen is convinced that if our God cares enough to be there, then we also must have the courage to go there and stop pretending that these things are not happening in our world today.