Investigative Journalist to Give Lecture on Modern-Day Slavery

E. Benjamin Skinner, investigative journalist and author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery, will talk about the global scale of human trafficking and slavery on Wednesday, Oct. 5 at 7:30 p.m. in the Rehm Library, Smith Hall, at the College of the Holy Cross. The lecture, presented by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, is free and open to the public.

In researching his book, A Crime So Monstrous (Free Press, 2008), Skinner observed negotiations for the sale of human beings on four continents. In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, just five hours travel time from downtown Manhattan, Skinner negotiated the purchase of a 10-year-old girl for domestic and sex slavery for $50 USD. He shares these stories along with the stories of survivors, dealers, and the former U.S. antislavery czar, John Miller, former director of the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons from 2003-06. A Crime So Monstrous won the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for nonfiction, and one of its chapters was adapted into an Emmy-award-winning episode on ABC’s Nightline called "How to Buy a Child in Ten Hours."

Skinner is senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. He has written for Time, Newsweek International, The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, Travel + Leisure, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. He serves on the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade.

He recently spoke about modern-day slavery for PBS’s Need to Know.

To learn more about Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture events and to listen to lectures online, visit holycross.edu/crec.

About The Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture: Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture provides resources for faculty and course development, sponsors conferences and college-wide teaching events, hosts visiting fellows, and coordinates a number of campus lecture series. Rooted in the College’s commitment to invite conversation about basic human questions, the Center welcomes persons of all faiths and seeks to foster dialogue that acknowledges and respects differences, providing a forum for intellectual exchange that is interreligious, interdisciplinary, intercultural, and international in scope.  The Center also brings members of the Holy Cross community into conversation with the Greater Worcester community, the academic community, and the wider world to examine the role of faith and inquiry in higher education and in the larger culture.