By David Anderson
The Prince Charming far, far too many sex trafficked victims will never meet.
When Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis conceived the TV series entitled “Once Upon A Time,” it was rejected by the networks as “too fantastic.”
Their 2004 idea, which would become reality on ABC in 2011, was to interrupt the stories long ago told of such fictional fairy tale characters as Snow White and Prince Charming among many, many others and fast-forward them into the future wherein, cursed, they cannot remember how their original story ends.
Geppetto gets to hear from Grumpy, for example, and vice versa since the two are released from the pages of their individual story-lines to find themselves in another time, another place, and for the first time face-to-face, interacting in ways they’d otherwise never have had opportunity.
All have been robbed of living happily ever after, ripped from their more idyllic setting, and given instead a hole, an emptiness, a void in their heart and lives that something is missing.
They are trapped in someone else’s story.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way.
In the creator’s concept, “Once Upon A Time” is about the viewer identifying with the character – their development, their quest, their hope to fulfill a dream in the nightmare in which they, through no fault of their own, have been transported.
“How do we make these icons real, make them relatable?” was the question that drove each dilemma said Executive producer Horowitz.
That was Mary Frances Bowley’s quest as well when she authored “The White Umbrella” subtitled “Walking with Survivors of Sex Trafficking.”
“‘The White Umbrella’ will break your heart and inspire you to do something,” wrote Andy Stanley.
Because in its pages – and in many similar accounts: “Mending the Soul;” “Beyond the Soiled Curtain;” and more – are the stories taking place on a planet of interrupted lives “that are not as they should be”: our planet, and girls whose sexually enslaved age averages just eleven years old.
Not somewhere else but here.
Not some other time but now.
Not someone else but me, and you the reader, need to hear their cry.
And be inspired “to do something.”
