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The heartwarming picture was unforgettable. A slight, black-ponytailed Thai hugged a tall, blonde American woman around the waist to celebrate long-awaited good news for the young woman: the government had granted her travel permission to visit family.

The Thai’s background made the scene even more poignant. Years earlier, she had been tricked and sold to a brothel where she was watched continuously, often under lock and key, and forced to sell her body. She managed to escape.

Enter American Baptist missionary Lauran Bethell, who in 1987 became the first director of the New Life Center, a home in Chiang Mai, Thailand, that aims through general and Christian education to stop the exploitation of women and children in the nation’s sex industry. Sexual tourism generates tens of millions of dollars annually from foreign men who go to Thailand to prey on them. For the next 13 years, Bethell’s soft heart helped deliver from tragic lifestyles some 800 girls between the ages of 8 and 20, including the young woman who hugged her as she joyously cried.

But Bethell’s tender heart is made of steel. This hard-as-nails toughness was first expressed in her passionate work with the center, where residents can get a ninth-grade education. The center expanded as more resources became available and is now comprised of four buildings. It’s home to as many as 200 “high risk” girls at a time.

About 70 percent of New Life Center girls become Christians during their average 3- to 5-year stays, Bethell says. In a nation that’s only one percent Christian, that success is significant. Ken Isaacs wholeheartedly agrees. Speaking on behalf of Samaritan’s Purse, the Boone, N.C.-based evangelical relief organization that has supported New Life Center, his visit to the facility left him “very impressed with the work, [both] from a physical and spiritual side,” he said.

“Working as a Christian in Thailand, there are hefty limitations on what can be done to lead people to Christ,” Isaacs said. “But all of the program sites of the New Life Center were filled with Christ’s love and compassion. I especially was touched by the vocational training center of the program, where the young women showed off the items they made with such pride, and [where] they sang songs of praise and worship.”

That some girls accepted into the program come from the very lifestyle the center works to educate against is not surprising, given that 60,000 to 1 million Thai girls and women are prostitutes. More than 1 million Thais are HIV positive-a shocking 2 percent of its 60 million population.

Statistics like these fuel Bethell’s steely heart. They also propelled her into a new ministry in December. Leaving New Life Center to its second director, Karen Smith, Bethell relocated to Prague to serve as an American Baptist Mission “global specialist.” As such, she serves as a consultant to groups that minister to trafficked women and children.

“I can tell you a lot about Thailand and Asia since I spent 22 years on that continent,” Bethell said. “But trafficking in women and children is not a problem limited to Asia. Nowhere in the world is this not a problem.” She testified last year before a U.S. Senate sub-committee about a bill on the trafficking of women from other countries into the United States.

“The laws that have been in place have been like a slap on the hand, where violators have had to pay some small fine,” she said. “So the hearing was to consider how to tighten up the laws even in the United States so that the exploitation of women and children for either labor or sex or both can be eliminated.” She said these issues have been around for a long time but only recently have begun coming to light. “When we first opened New Life Center in 1987, there were next to no role models for us to look at for working with issues of child prostitution and the exploitation of women and children,” she said.

Times have changed. Bethell believes God’s timing has opened the door to expanding the ministry to assist churches and non-government organizations in reaching out to exploited women and children. Europe was chosen as the headquarters for the new consultation work because, she said, “These issues are exploding in Europe,” and because of its easy access to other parts of the world, none of which are immune to the problem.

“God’s Spirit has begun moving powerfully in this area,” she said, noting there is a growing vision worldwide both of the problem and of the need to address it. “It seems evident that God is calling the church to reach into those shadows where women and children have been kept in the past.”

July 20, 2001