Emily Graves spoke with the former Emmerdale star Tom Lister

Tom Lister

Former Emmerdale star and committed Christian, Tom Lister, will be pushing himself to the limit in May when he goes on a 2,715 KM cycle ride across mainland Europe in just 20 days.

Raising awareness and money for Hope for Justice, the Zoe Challenge cycle follows Zoe's journey who was trafficked from Latvia to Southampton and sold from man to man and from town to town, until she was rescued. Emily Graves spoke with Tom to find out more.

Emily: You are doing this alongside Hope for Justice aren't you?

Tom: I am yes.

Emily: Can you tell us about Hope for Justice?

Tom: Hope for Justice is a charity that's based in the UK and they exist to see child trafficking and the exploitation and slavery of people in our country cease. You might have seen the film Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce, that all those years ago in the eighteenth century he got a bill passed through parliament that made slavery illegal; but the fact is that slavery still exists today and actually to a greater extent than it did in Wilberforce's day. People are being brought into our country and they are being put through horrendous circumstances, such as forced labour and sexual exploitation. That's what Hope for Justice is there for. They rescue victims, get them out and get them their freedom back. They also campaign to make sure that the people who are doing it get prosecuted. I work really closely with them. It's a charity that's very close to my heart. Together we really believe that we can see human trafficking cease to exist in our country if we stand up and fight it. A lot of the answer to that fight exists within the local church.

Emily: How much of an issue is human trafficking in the UK?

Tom: A lot more than people would believe. It certainly shocked me when I spent a bit of time with Ben Cooley. He's become a very good friend of mine. He's the chief exec at the charity and when he found out what was going on he was absolutely devastated and he didn't want to be one of those guys who just found out about something and then didn't do anything about it. That's why he started Hope for Justice. I haven't got my book to hand with all the proper figures, but it's estimated that about 1.2 million children are trafficked every year across international borders and that's in addition to the millions who are already in captivity. They reckon we've had children as young as four months old trafficked into this country and I think it's estimated that at any given time, this was a survey done in 2003, there's about 4,000 victims of sex trafficking who are active in prostitution in our country. We think they are really conservative estimates. It's happening under our noses and we're not aware of it, but it's going on. We're seeing people being rescued week in week out by investigators of Hope for Justice. We're doing an amazing job.

Emily: The cycle ride is called the Zoe Challenge. Why is it called the Zoe Challenge?

Tom: It follows a girl called Zoe who was trafficked from Latvia to Southampton. She came over here with a promise of a legitimate job. She thought she was coming over to work as a cleaner in a hotel and she met some guys at the airport and they took her to this hotel and her dream ended. She was handed some underwear and told she had to work as a sex slave. She said, 'No, I've not come here for that'; but the traffickers have their horrendous ways and means of making people do stuff. She was told she was going to do what she was told whether she liked it or not and then she was sold from man to man, from town to town. She was working as a sex slave in this country until Hope for Justice rescued her. They got her out and got her, her freedom back.

During that period of time when she was still held in captivity, she thought there was nothing left to live for and she actually tried to end her own life, but didn't succeed and her nightmare continued as her trafficker went down and picked her up from where she jumped from. She just messed up her leg really badly and he dragged her back up the stairs and put back on the bed and got her back to working. It's a horrendous story and one that thankfully ended in her finding her freedom.

I'm quite into doing big challenges, I've done marathons and triathlons and things like that; so Ben and I were putting our heads together trying to think of something we could do that would capture people's imagination and also tell the story that we want to tell. That's where we came up with the Zoe Challenge, which is totally crazy and I've got absolutely no idea how I'm going to do it, but in May of this year we're going to bike from Latvia to Southampton in 20 days and hopefully it's just going to be epic in every way.

Emily: Will you be stopping along the way to tell people about what you are doing, or will you just be cycling all the way non-stop?

Tom: Obviously we'll do about 100 miles a day, so we'll have periods of time when we'll be stopping overnight in hotels and just resting up and getting ready for the next day. A lot of the continental Europe part will be on a relatively small scale in terms of the people who are involved in it, but we're hoping people will join us on route. We've got some British cyclists who're asking us where we're going to be in Europe and whether they can come and join us for a little bit of it. We've got some great support. Then we get into the UK. We're coming into the UK on the 29th May into Hull, which is where Wilberforce was from. Then we spend four days cycling down the UK and that's when we're hoping to just explode it. We want cyclists to join us; we want people to come and join us on each leg. We're hoping for 50 plus extra cyclists. We've already got television and sports personalities who are going to join us on those legs. Some of my mates are coming from Emmerdale to bike with us; we've got comedy Dave from the Radio One breakfast show as was and Rebecca Adlington. When we're in the UK we're going to be in the press and hopefully get on local news and stuff like that.