Gardens of the Night



This is a film that is very difficult to watch, especially when you realize that it depicts a story that is all too often a stark reality for some children.

It is the story of an eight-year child, Leslie, who is kidnapped from her upper middle class home and thrust into a new world of unspeakable terror. For seven years, she lives in a world of horror as a sexual slave. She and another girl, Donnie, are locked up together and have only each other to turn to for emotional support.

Eventually both children are abandoned by their captors. As young adults they must now fend for themselves on the streets, often surviving in a hand-to-mouth existence on the mean, cold city streets of San Diego. Of course, both women will forever be haunted by their pasts, and will often suffer the shame of believing that they somehow got what they deserved in life

This movie is actually painful to watch, but you can’t help but believe that maybe watching it will serve to educate about the very real existence of sexual slavery rings in our society today, and how innocent children can be lured into them by despicable paedophiles that lack even a sliver of moral fibre in their pitiful lives.

Despite the pain, this film is definitely worth seeing, though I wouldn’t want my children to view it because of its graphic nature. Instead, talk to them about it, and use it as an object lesson to them about the danger of being too trusting in our society today.

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