Kachepa said: "My family was supposed to be getting money for food, I was supposed to be getting an education in the United States and when all of those are not happening, at the age of 11, what are you supposed to do?"

Kachepa had become caught up in the modern day trans-national slave trade - a global criminal enterprise that touches virtually every country on earth.

The UN and US State Department estimate 800,000 slaves are trafficked every year.

Ethan Kapstein, of the Centre for Global Development, said: "The modern contemporary slave trade dwarfs the historic Atlantic slave trade. The Atlantic slave trade brought to north America in total 500,000 Africans over its entire history. Compared to that, we are talking almost a million people a year."

Modern slaves

Most modern day slaves are women and children - the most vulnerable members of society.

They perform backbreaking labour on farms or in sweatshops, toil as domestic servants or sex workers.

Kapstein said: "what we estimate is that the slave trade brings in something like $10bn a year."

The UN estitames 800, 000 slaves are trafficked every year [Al Jazeera]

Kachepa now lives in Texas with his American guardians, Sandy and Deetz Shepherd, who took him in after the fraudulent choir scheme was broken up by US immigration authorities. He and most of the other boys received special visas reserved for trafficking victims.

 

He's finally getting that college education and he speaks out against human trafficking, in the media and in any public forum he can find.

 

Kachepa said: "I believe God used that whole thing to get me to this point and what I have to do now is carry on telling people about human trafficking [and] telling them there is a problem, and the problem needs to be fixed."