Deeply ingrained in our modern psyche is the notion that slavery ended in the 19th century. The brutal fact is that girls and boys, men and women of all ages are forced to sell their bodies in the brothels of Rome, break rocks in the quarries of Pakistan, and fight wars in the jungles of Africa. Go behind the façade of any major town or city in the world, and you are likely to find a thriving commerce in human beings.

Maybe we are not shocked to learn that slaveholders press children to labor against their will in the cacao plantations of the Ivory Coast. But it would be unthinkable that a slaveholder might be an upstanding citizen living on our block.

I first encountered human trafficking in one of my neighborhood restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. As it turned out, the restaurant served as the hub of a trafficking ring that brought over 500 teenagers from India into the United States for forced labor.

In some respects, slavery feels invisible inside the United States. Just as my wife and I never suspected for a moment that our favorite restaurant had become a hub for the slave trade, slavery likely crosses our path on a regular basis without our awareness. We may pass a construction site and never think twice whether the laborers work of their own volition. Or we might drive through the city at night, see young girls on a street corner peddling their bodies, and wonder how they ever could “choose” such a life.

Moved to action by this story and the experience in the local restaurant, I began an international investigation into the slave trade in February 2007. I traveled to northern Thailand, since my research indicated that large numbers of women and children in the region were being held captive and forced to labor for the profit of slave masters.

Shortly after my arrival, I bumped into Kru Nam, an unlikely modern-day abolitionist. She was an artist from Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand. So what gift might a painter have that would transform her into an abolitionist? An absolute dedication to the destiny of children. Every day as she walked the streets of Chiang Mai on the way to her studio, she saw kids living on the riverbanks. One day she took empty canvases down to the river, handed out tins of paint and brushes to the kids, and asked them to paint their stories. Once she turned the kids loose, they created a series of disturbing images that added up to a horror story.

Kru Nam could not comprehend how these kids, ranging from eight to twelve years old, could know such tragedy. “Most of us are not from Thailand,” they explained. “We come from Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and as far away as China.” They went on to explain that some had been kidnapped, others sold by their parents, and still others were told that they could attend school if they crossed the border into Thailand. All of them ended up in the child-sex brothels of Chiang Mai.

The kids told Kru Nam that they were the lucky ones. After all, many of their friends were still locked up in the bars, forced to submit to the pleasures of sex tourists who traveled the globe to find pleasure with children. These river kids had escaped, yet remained ever wary that they could be captured and returned to captivity.

Kru Nam did not exactly have a plan when she marched into the city that evening. Only her mission was clear: Rescue as many of the young kids as she could find. Upon entering the first karaoke bar, she did not even seek to negotiate with the owner; she knew it would be a waste of her time. But to her disappointment, only three kids sat at tables entertaining the male customers; the others were out on “dates” with johns.

She approached the table where the kids were sitting and calmly said, “Let’s go. I’m taking you out of here.” Within minutes, she was leading two girls and a boy out the door and to a safe destination in Chiang Mai.

Upon meeting Kru Nam, I was overwhelmed with her expression of love. I immediately knew I had to do something more than write a book about the global slave trade. I had to stand alongside Kru Nam and other abolitionists I encountered to help free the captives. Over the next year, Kru Nam rescued over 125 kids from sex brothels and border crossings in northern Thailand, and I launched the Not For Sale Campaign so that I could help her build a village to protect the children and offer them a future.

My encounter with irresistible love sent me on my search for justice. Justice is a rational pursuit, a calculated decision to balance the scales and ensure that all individuals are treated with dignity. Love, however, moves us to transcend what we calculate as reasonable. Justice moves me to search for answers; truthfully, that’s my natural inclination. But love takes me to depths of compassion. Not everyone is wired the same way, of course;  becoming an abolitionist does not indicate one kind of activity. The movement needs educators, preachers, entrepreneurs, counselors, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, prayer warriors, athletes, and students. But in the throes of love, however, all recognize the conditions that day in and day out make people vulnerable to greed and exploitation, and they seek answers that only justice can provide.

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David Batstone is the President and Co-Founder of the Not For Sale Campaign. Follow him on Twitter.