Nefarious: Merchant of Souls
"Nefarious" was written, directed, produced, and narrated by Benjamin Nolot, founder and president of Exodus Cry. Exodus Cry, which distributed the film, is headquartered in Grandview, Missouri and is an organization that opposes human trafficking by raising awareness, by reintegrating victims back into society, and by prayer. Nolot founded Exodus Cry in 2007 after a woman he did not know gave him , saying that God told her to do so in order that Nolot might found an anti-human-trafficking organization. This was founded at a prayer meeting later that year where attendees prayed for human trafficking victims. The organization claims that this prayer meeting occurred on the day before the announcement of the 2007 international child pornography investigation, which involved approximately 2,400 human-trafficking-related arrests in 77 countries.
Nefarious: Merchant of Souls
The film was officially released on July 27, 2011, with individual grassroots screenings also taking place. Nolot appeared at a screening in Appleton, Wisconsin, and afterwards led a question and answer session with a local police officer. During this time, Nolot promoted the Red Light Campaign, wherein drivers waiting at red lights pray for sex trafficking to end. Texas State representative Todd Ames Hunter attended a screening at the Summit Church in Corpus Christi, saying that human trafficking "is a critical issue to the state of Texas that needs education and attention." The Justice Alliance, a Christian nonprofit organization that raises awareness about human trafficking, hosted a screening in the auditorium of El Dorado Middle School in Kansas. Florida Abolitionist, a non-governmental organization that also opposes human trafficking, sponsored a screening at the Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida. Most of the attendees were Christians. The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) hosted two screenings of the film in 2012, one of which took place before the Parliament of Tasmania. The Government of Tasmania was considering reforms to the Tasmanian sex industry at the time and the ACL was disappointed because the only politicians who showed up to the screening were four members of the Liberal Party. The ACL planned screenings in the rest of the states of Australia as well, hoping to convince legislators that the criminalization of the purchase of sex is the only effective way of combatting sexual slavery. Another screening was held at United Nations headquarters in New York City in March 2012 during that year's session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.