I remember when I was 19 and I was listening to a call-in radio show when a 15-year old girl phoned in crying so hard she could barely speak. She had just found out that she was HIV-positive. She'd had sex for the first time in her life with an older boy who later revealed he was a somtimes drug-user. She was calling in because she was too afraid to tell anyone about it because she was afraid her parents would find out she'd had sex.

This was some years before anti-retroviral therapeutics. This may well have been her death sentence. I pray she made it long enough to receive the life-saving drugs.

This is just one story, which stayed with me and always will. There are millions of heartbreaking stories around the world. Some far more horrific. So many children in Africa watched their parents die - how many of those orphans were then swept up into trafficking schemes? Is this why HIV had such a disproportionate impact in Africa (something epidemiologists couldn't properly explain)?

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY