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PRESS RELEASE
September 2009
The PREVENTING ABUSE CONFERENCE
will show the multi-award-winning feature film A Dance For Bethany
Friday evening, September 11th, 2009,
Irvine Hilton, Orange
County, California. The film was chosen for its significance in the world
movement against abuse.
This important two day conference includes prominent guest speakers on such
relevant topics as human trafficking, child abduction, internet predators,
extremists, and moral collapse as well as training to get involved in the
effort. For details call 1-866-454-1776 or visit
www.preventingabuse.org.
Little did Yvonne
and Marion Williams know that the film business they started three years ago
would turn into a crusade against human sex-trafficking. But as the Williams
tell their story, "God had a plan."
At the time, the
former Bradenton, Florida natives were living in Asheville, N.C., in a grand
house on a mountain overlooking the city. Yvonne Williams had just finished
her first screenplay - a story of a reporter who through her investigations
of a prostitution ring finds her own redemption while helping free a
trafficked stripper find the life she was meant to live.
"I set out to
write a novel, but I literally heard a voice tell me to write a screenplay
instead," she said. "It is an inspired project.”
She took her
screenplay west to sell it. But that didn’t happen. Discouraged after nine
grueling days of meetings, she returned to her L.A. hotel. While packing
for her return flight she randomly flicked the TV to see Bill O'Reilly
talking to Michele Gillen, a reporter who has made a career of investigating
the multibillion-dollar industry of human trafficking, a form of slavery
that spans the globe. Revitalized, Yvonne realized that she was hearing the
story she had written and was trying to sell!
She returned home and contacted experts working in the field of human
trafficking in order to fine tune the script for accuracy and made a few
adjustments and making the supporting character, Bethany, a victim of sex
traffickers. And so the Williamses, after researching the sordid details of
a dark underworld from which few escape, decided to produce the film
independently.
Marion Williams,
a former prison minister, cultivated investors, raising the large budget
required to produce a successful independent feature film.
But once again, the Williamses said, "God intervened." They realized their
film was more than a story; it has become their life project.
Told without the
gratuitous violence and shocking sex scenes of most films on human
trafficking, "A Dance for Bethany" has proved to be a catalyst,
informing viewers of the problem and inspiring audiences to take action, the
couple said. This is one of the reasons it was chosen for this important
conference.
The potential for
social change convinced the Williamses to reorganize their for-profit film
company to a nonprofit business aptly named Raise the Bar Productions. Their
goal: to show the film in as many towns and cities as possible, then hold
panel discussions on how communities can mobilize to stop human trafficking
and prevent their at-risk youth from falling prey to predators.
“Our goal is to
not leave a community the way we found it," said Marion Williams
Human trafficking is not just a third world issue, the couple has found. In
the US, our children and adolescents as well as adults are being victimized
daily. The average age of victims is 12. Most are young girls forced into
prostitution, stripping or into the Internet pornography business. "It is
believed that more than 40 percent of missing and runaway children in
America end up as victims of human traffickers," Marion Williams said.
While the actual
number of victims is hard to pin down, the U.S. State Department estimates
that nearly 800,000 people are taken against their will each year with more
than 20,000 victims being taken into the United States, with Florida and
California being leading entry points. Other estimates place the number of
victims as high 3 million.
"A Dance for
Bethany" has garnered three awards from the three film festivals it
entered, winning best feature film at the Faith and Film Motion Picture
Festival as well as the Redemptive Storyteller Award at the Redemptive Film
Festival, and the award of excellence for the score in the L.A. Accolade
competition submitted by the film’s music Composer.
The film is currently being marketed domestically and around the globe by
Princ Films.
Hollywood actors Robyn Lively and William McNamara starred in the lead roles
of reporter Abbey Fisher and her attorney-husband James.
Marion and Yvonne Williams currently live near Nashville, TN and are
available to groups and organizations working to help in the fight against
human trafficking and slavery in America. Contact information is available
on the website:
www.adanceforbethany.com
Please visit our new
site:
www.humantraffickingmovie.com |
