CV NEWS FEED // One of the latest critiques of the child trafficking hit movie, Sound of Freedom, dismisses the movie as irrelevant to “the real” human trafficking world and links it to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. The author of the critique, Noah Berlatsky, is actively involved in a controversial pedophilia advocacy group and believes that pedophiles and sex offenders are “misunderstood”.
Berlatsky argues that the messages in the Sound of Freedom “create coalitions of feeling, disgust, and righteous rage that connect conservative conspiracy theorists with the mainstream.” According to Berlatsky, child sex abuse doesn’t happen in the way that movies portray it and cites the Counter-Trafficking Data Collaborative’s numbers, which state that two-thirds of sexually trafficked children are 15 to 17 years old, and 41% of all child trafficking cases involve a family member.
What Berlatsky doesn’t say, however, is that sex trafficking of 15 to 17 year-old minors is still child abuse. He also neglects the other one-third of child sex abuse cases which includes abuse of children under 14 years old. Though Sound of Freedom depicts the trafficking of young children, the statistics Berlatsky cites show that the movie is not unrealistic.
Berlatsky’s attempt to dismiss Sound of Freedom’s anti-child sexual abuse message makes more sense after readers understand the author’s own views on pedophilia.
In 2021, Berlatsky was hired as the communications director for Prostasia, an organization that claims to “protect” minors from sexual abuse by finding “value” in pornography for children, normalizing societal attitudes about “minor-attracted persons, and legitimizing sex workers as people “doing what they have to do to get by.” He claims parents are an “oppressive class, like rich people or white people.”
“Pedophiles are essentially a stigmatized group,” Berlatsky tweeted in 2017. “Certain people get designated as deviants, people hate them.”
“The issue isn’t that people care about the victims. The issue is that pedophiles are loathed,” he continued.
Berlatsky also claims that the criminal justice system, through sex offender registries, unfairly targets pedophiles.
Berlatsky could not be reached for comment.
