Francis Bok speaks to Harvard Law School students and community members about the horrors of slavery from his own experience, and shares how his faith helped to keep him alive. Since his escape, he has dedicated his life to speaking on behalf of those who are still in bondage. "What good is my freedom if my brothers and sisters around the world are still not free?", he asks. While most Americans believe that slavery ended in 1865, the reality is that an estimated 30 million people worldwide are enslaved today, more than at any other time in history. Modern day slavery is defined as "forced labor without pay under the threat of violence." Contemporary slavery includes debt bondage, chattel, and sex slavery. The United States legally abolished slavery more than a century ago, but slavery still exists within our borders. According to the CIA, 50,000 people are brought from countries around the globe under false or misleading pretenses and enslaved in US cities. **Francis Bok** is an escaped slave. In 1986, at age seven, Bok was abducted during a slave raid on his village in southern Sudan. He saw adults and children brutalized and killed before his eyes. For ten years, he slept outside with cattle, endured daily beatings, ate rotten food, and worked as a slave. Bok has spoken on college campuses across the country, testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and on NPR, and carried the 2001 Winter Olympic Torch on its national relay tour. On October 21, 2002, Bok was invited to the White House for the Sudan Peace Act signing ceremony where he spoke with President Bush at length, perhaps becoming the first former slave to meet an American president since the 19th Century.
