Hardback: From living the rock star life to wading through the world's war zones, refugee camps and brothels, Aaron Cohen left behind his closest friends, his dying father, and his partnership with a legendary musician to take on treacherous rescue missions in search of modern-day slaves.
Years of drug addiction and late-night partying led Aaron Cohen, one-time best friend and business partner to Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, on a path of spiritual discovery that has both transformed and endangered his life - a path that has drawn him into the shantytowns of Cambodia and the hidden brothels of Latin America, across the sweltering savannahs of Sudan, up to the Dalai Lama's Himalayan retreat, and through the unforgiving jungles of Burma and the deserts of Iraq.
At a time when more people than ever before are enslaved somewhere on the planet, Aaron Cohen is a slave hunter - working to find and free human beings from various forms of bondage.
The flesh trade is the world's fastest-growing and most deadly illegal enterprise - even more profitable and easier to hide than guns, drugs, and precious gems.
Free from diplomatic restrictions and political agendas, Cohen is a unique asset to government agencies, think tanks, and anti-slavery organizations.
He navigates the oppressive territory of pimps and drug lords, cloaked in the all-too-familiar world of substance abuse, oversized egos, and changing rules.
Working alone and posing as a sex tourist, he slips into brothels, urged by madams to select from a lineup of women and girls as young as six!
Sometimes he can save them from their captors, but more often than not, he must leave them behind, taking only the evidence he hopes will eventually lead to their rescue.
Struggling to make ends meet on his own negligible salary, Cohen faces temptations few could resist and witnesses atrocities his friends and family cannot understand.
And though many assignments over the years carry him away from his ailing father, his commitment to protect, assist, and empower human trafficking victims - and to disrupt the patterns that lead to all forms of enslavement - is unyielding.
In a remarkable exposé of a sinister trade most of us will never experience first-hand, rocker-turned-antislavery activist Aaron Cohen reveals the fast-paced, timely, inspiring, and unforgettable story of a real life Slave Hunter (2009).
About the authors: Aaron Cohen is a human rights activist who draws his inspiration from the Jubilee, the ancient law of debt forgiveness and slave liberation. Cohen has established a modern-day Jubilee movement to forgive debts and free slaves around the world, Abolish Slavery. Cohen was awarded a Commendation from the County of Los Angeles for his efforts to combat human trafficking. On his international missions to Nicaragua, Israel, Egypt, Ecuador, Iraq, Colombia, and Myanmar (formerly Burma), Cohen worked undercover and assessed the slavery phenomenon from the inside. He received the World War II Memorial Foundation/The Immortal Chaplains 2008 Prize for Humanity and has been honoured with a US Congressional Certificate of Merit for his public service.
Christine Buckley was born in New York and is a graduate of Boston College. Her travels have taken her to five continents and taught her to shear sheep, cultivate rice, sail without a GPS, and edit a state-run newspaper with a straight face. Christine's LA Weekly cover story on Aaron Cohen was a 2008 LA Press Club and Maggie Award finalist. She has contributed to National Public Radio, the New York Times, Russian Newsweek, and Current TV, among others. Her reporting has also won her an Associated Press award. She plans to return to Southeast Asia to work with human trafficking victims.
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