TK Kenyon Press Releases TOC

On this July 4th, the celebration of our freedom, let us remember those still enslaved.

Trafficking in persons, the legal term for kidnapping and enslavement, is the third largest criminal industry in the world today, after arms and drug dealing, and is the fastest growing. Internationally, traffickers generate billions of dollars in profits every year while victimizing millions of people. Young women and girls are promised jobs as hotel maids or models, though many times they are merely kidnapped, often smuggled over international borders, and then raped and forced into prostitution and slavery.

An estimated 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked annually in the United States alone. The number of US citizens trafficked within the country are even higher, with an estimated more than 200,000 American children at high risk for trafficking into the sex industry each year.

Polaris Project is a grass-roots, tax-deductible charitable organization dedicated to stopping human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Polarisproject.org

T.K. Kenyon, novelist is auctioning off the naming rights for a character in her next novel, due out in 2008. Her first novel, RABID, garnered excellent, starred reviews as "a philosophical, genre-bending story, part thriller, part literary slapdown."

All proceeds from the auction go directly to Polaris Project and are tax-deductible.

The 10-day auction on Ebay.com will begin on Tuesday, July 3, 2007, and run through Friday, July 13, 2007. www.ebay.com, Ebay Item # 190128866026, or search for "charity auction name a character in a novel." Please note the revised search number due to Ebay's technical error.

Not all those in the land of the free and the home of the brave are free.