Slave Hunter

Slave Hunter by Aaron Cohen with Christine Buckley (Simon and Schuster)

This incredible odyssey follows Aaron Cohen from his California rock-star life in the company of legendary musicians all the way to the war zones, refugee camps, and brothels of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East—as he takes on treacherous rescue missions in search of modern-day slaves, and lays bare the secrets behind trafficking networks.
Aaron Cohen’s long years of drug addiction and late-night parties as onetime best friend, business and artistic partner to Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell put him on the path to a spiritual discovery that has both transformed and endangered his life, leading Cohen into the shantytowns of Cambodia and the hidden brothels of Ecuador, across the sweltering savannahs of Sudan, up to the Dalai Lama’s Himalayan retreat, through the unforgiving jungles of Burma and the deserts of Iraq. At a time when more people than ever before are enslaved somewhere on the planet, Aaron Cohen is a slave hunter—working to find and free human beings from various forms of bondage.
People are more profitable and easier to hide than the guns, drugs, and precious gems that are moved along with them—making the flesh trade the world’s fastest-growing and most deadly illegal enterprise. Unconfined by diplomatic restrictions or political agendas, Cohen has been a unique asset to government agencies, think tanks, and antislavery organizations alike. He navigates his way skillfully through the territory of pimps and drug lords—an all-too-familiar realm of substance abuse, oversized egos, and changing rules. Working alone and undercover, posing as a sex tourist, he slips into brothels, urged by madams to select from a lineup of women and girls as young as six. Sometimes he can free sex slaves from their captors, but more often than not, he is forced to leave them behind, taking back only the evidence he collects in the hope that it will eventually lead to their rescue.
While struggling to make ends meet on a negligible salary, Cohen faces temptations few could resist and witness atrocities that scar him and leave friends and family at an uncomprehending distance. And though many assignments have carried him away from his ailing and beloved father, his commitment to protect, assist and empower trafficking victims—and to disrupt the patterns that lead to all forms of enslavement—is unyielding.
In a remarkable exposé of a sinister trade most of us will never experience firsthand, rocker-turned-antislavery activist Aaron Cohen’s prophetic memoir reveals the fast-paced, timely, unforgettable story of a real-life Slave Hunter.