Meet Detroit Couple, Pitcher & Ashley Boyd Who Are Saving Ugandan Girls From Sex Slavery
Detroit Tigers, Pitcher Matt Boyd and his wife, Ashley are on a mission to end this sex slave. The young couple has founded a new nonprofit, Kingdom Home, that is providing 36 girls in Uganda with a safe place to grow up, and they want every at-risk child in Uganda to have the same thing.
1.2 million children are trafficked for sex each year. Thatâs 3,040 children every single day, one child every 26 seconds, reports say.
These innocent children, most of whom are between the ages of 3 and 16, are often kept in locked rooms and forced to serve 10-15 adults per night. The vast majority are girls, and many of them donât last longer than three years, due to the industryâs high death rate.
Detroit Tigers, Pitcher Matt Boyd and his wife, Ashley are on a mission to end this sex slave. The young couple has founded a new nonprofit, Kingdom Home, that is providing 36 girls in Uganda with a safe place to grow up, and they want every at-risk child in Uganda to have the same thing.
The mission is massive and jaw-dropping in its scope and goal. Matt and his wife essentially adopted the girls. They are responsible for their feeding, clothing, rent for their home, as well as praying for them, worry about them, and make sure they are safe. Matt said:
”The bad guys arenât smarter than we are. We can beat them to the kids.â
Together, the amazing couple are charging forward with their goal to completely eradicate sex slavery in Uganda.
Matt and Ashley are college sweethearts from Oregon State University. After they graduated in 2013, they had their first real exposure to the horrors of human trafficking when Ashley began working for Remember Nhu, (Remember Nhu has over 100 homes in more than 15 countries) an organization dedicated to ending child sex slavery through prevention.
Ashley says that even though itâs a heart-wrenching issue, this was her dream job. Not only could she be part of the organizationâs mission and work toward providing safe places for children to live, she was able to do so remotely.
This was crucial because Matt was a minor league baseball player, and as is typical for the league, he was promoted, demoted, and traded to teams all over the country when he first started out. The Boyds lived in nine cities during their first year of marriage.
Matt would fly with the baseball team, and Ashley would pack up the truck and follow with their belongings. Ashley said:
âItâs easy to get caught up in the world of baseball but I was thankful to have that job and to be able to contribute to something I was so passionate about.â
But it wasnât just Ashleyâs project â Matt was committed too. Ashley revealed
âHe always said little things, you know how you daydream with your spouse like what if we started our own nonprofit doing this work some day? Itâs funny, because looking back you can really see how God was planting that seed in us.â
In 2015, Matt was promoted to the Major Leagues and soon began pitching for the Detroit Tigers, and in 2017 the couple welcomed their first child, Meira. At that point, Ashley decided to take a step back from her role at Remember Nhu.
But the problem of human trafficking was a burden that continued to weigh heavily on both Matt and Ashleyâs hearts.
So when Ashleyâs former boss, Carl Ralston approached them in late 2017 with an idea, âobviously the Lordâs hand was in it,â Ashley said.
Ralston talked honestly with Matt and Ashley, admitting that while he was completely committed to seeing the end of child sex trafficking, he wasnât naive enough to think he, or Remember Nhu, could do it alone. He said:
âFor this to happen in our lifetime, we need other people to step up. We need new nonprofits who are dedicated to this same mission.â
Ralston asked them to consider how they could participate. Matt and Ashley shared a glance, thinking of their old daydreams about starting a nonprofit.
They were honored and intrigued, and they felt called to help, but it also felt like something far offâa vision that would come to fruition at some point in the future. Right now, they were focused on being parents for the first time. But it was just a few months later, in early 2018, when Ralston called back. And it was urgent.
Ralston had been contacted by an Ugandan woman identified as Dorothy Stella Alue. She and her husband had taken 36 girls into their home, rescuing them from all kinds of nightmarish fates.
According to the Detroit Free Press, one of the girls had been abandoned at the side of the road, another sold into marriage at the age of 9, and another had been a sex worker at a bar.
Ralston told Detroit Free Press that he gets calls about situations like this constantly. Nine times out of 10, there are red flags and he really canât do anything to help. But his team had vetted her and her story and knew it was the real deal.
The girls were still safe, but Dorothy needed help. Her husband had passed away, and in their culture in Uganda, that meant his family had the right to take everything if they wanted. And they did. As she wrote to the Detroit Free Press, âMy in-laws became wild and turned against me.â Ashley further said:
”They took everything, from her home even down to her drivers license. So the only thing Dorothy had left were the clothes on her back and these 36 girls.”
Dorothy knew the danger for unprotected young girls in Uganda all too well; she herself had been a victim of violence and had almost been sold as a child bride before she ran away and found refuge in a church.
She had then made it her mission in life to save other children from this fate and had found each of the girls personally through her connections as a former parole officer and via word of mouth. Her greatest fear was for their safety.
As Ralston relayed this story to Matt and Ashley that day, his question was, simply put: âWill you take this on?â Ashley answered; âWHAT?!â.
â It was so daunting. We had just had our own daughter and we were trying to figure out how to manage that, let alone take on a whole home of children!â
They told Ralston they would pray about it. Ashley added:
âOur faith, and our mission statement and marriage values have really been the bedrock of our marriage and they have really helped us go back to why are we doing this, should we be doing this, how are we doing this.â
In the end the Boyds decided that they would take this on. They had no idea where to start â Ashley had worked for a nonprofit, but starting one was going to be a whole different ball game. The Boyds then established Kingdom Home last year to provide an accommodation for the girls. Ashley believes:
âWhatâs so amazing, and encouraging, and exciting, is that God has provided all the resourcesânot just financially, but in support from mentors, other organizations, and nitty-gritty details like drafting our bylaws. These are the things that will help us grow and truly end this issue.â
Today, Ashley is the executive director of their new nonprofit, Kingdom Home. Thanks to generous donors to the organization, most of whom heard about this work via grassroots networking and word of mouth, these 36 girls have running water, school uniforms, shoes, three meals a day, and other basic necessities.
Most importantly, they have a safe place to grow up, and all of their needs are met in a loving way. Ashley shared further:
âOne of the hardest things about this is that we are constantly turning people away. She and Dorothy get requests constantly from people who are seeking help for children at risk, but she said that Dorothyâs home is currently âat capacity, and then some.â
Through their nonprofit, the Boyds have immediate plans to open four other homes for at-risk children, and soon others to follow â more Dorothys, more girls, and, ultimately, a support network so strong that they can end sex slavery altogether in Uganda.
Thatâs a massive goal, because in some areas of Uganda up to 10% of children have been trafficked. Ashley stated that sometimes she will lie awake at night thinking about how big this issue is, and how small she feels in comparison. She said:
âItâs hard to imagine that we can truly end this but we can with the Lord. He is already blessing us so much with the most amazing resources, and I know that with His help, we can.â
Matt says:
âThe bad guys arenât smarter than we are. We can beat them to the kids. We can protect them.â
The Boyds went to Uganda together to visit Dorothy and the girls for the first time in November 2018. Ashley revealed:
âYou would never guess what they had been through. Theyâre still so joyful. They are just like any other group of girls ages 8-14 â there are introverts and extroverts, girls who love to play sports, natural leaders, girls who love to talk and tell stories and make you laugh.â
Ashley and Matt loved spending time with each of the girls and getting to know their individual personalities. On the last day before they left, they all held hands and sang in their native language and in English. Ashley said:
âIt was so beautiful and we were all crying, and thatâs when it hit me: this is family. Weâre never going to be the same again.â
Balancing a 2-year-old daughter and a baby boy on the way, the travel schedule of a professional athlete, a nonprofit, and 36 children on the other side of the world certainly has its challenges, but according to the Boyds, it is also incredibly rewarding. Matt and Ashley say that these girls have taught them more than they could have ever imagined:
âA lot of times people can become embittered by their past, and carry it with them even if theyâve been through a healing process. They can still wear it, either as a badge, or if they havenât gone through the healing process, they are truly still scarred.
There are so many ways to be affected by the past, but these girls are so full of joy and hope for the future. They say you canât regain your purity and your innocence, and thatâs why we want to focus on prevention, because we agree. But none of these girls are letting that define them, and they are truly looking forward rather than back.â
Photo credit: Kingdom Home