The Only Hog from Pittman’s Hometown Braved Child Slavery

Redshirt freshman Emmanuel Crawford’s journey to college football was far from ordinary.

Long before the tailback enrolled at Arkansas as a preferred walk-on in the Class of 2023, Crawford was a victim of human trafficking when he was a 2-year-old child in Ghana. Crawford was sold into the fishing industry on Lake Volta, where approximately 20,000 children work for slave masters, according to the International Labour Organization.

“It’s kind of a common practice around that area just because of the poverty levels and struggling families,” Crawford said in 2023 during The Seeker Church’s Interview Series in Norman, Okla. “Oftentimes, they sell their oldest kid so they can have money to provide for the rest of the family. It’s not out of the ordinary to find a lot of kids who have been sold into childhood slavery – it’s very common.”

In an interview with Best of Arkansas Sports, Emmanuel’s mother, Audrey, said his enslavement forced her son to lead a life no child should ever experience.

“A typical day for him would be going out on the boat, bailing water and jumping in to untangle nets as they were fishing,” Audrey said. “Supposedly there are alligators and snakes and other things in Lake Volta.

“When other kids would do-si-do around and not even notice the door was shut or that they were falling down the stairs, that little boy had to fend for his life.”

Touch A Life

After the sudden loss of their teenage son in 1999, Pam Van Dorn and her ex-husband Randy Cope learned about the problem of street children in Vietnam. Pam learned about the beatings children would receive, the hunger and malnutrition they faced, and the odds that the children may land in the hands of child traffickers and forced to work in hard labor conditions or sexual bondage.

Compelled to help, the couple launched a non-profit, Touch A Life, and connected with others with similar aspirations in Vietnam. They rented an apartment in Saigon to house 15 children, and after a few months, rented a house to support 15 more children.

In 2006, Pam and Randy read a New York Times article about the horrors of child slavery in the Lake Volta region of Ghana in West Africa. They were appalled to learn the region is home to thousands of kids who were sold to work in the fishing industry or as domestic servants.

“We started working in Southeast Asia but then it organically grew to Ghana,” Pam said. “In 2007, Touch A Life started working in Ghana and we definitely targeted the demographic of children that have been sold into slavery on Lake Volta and we started our care program.”

With the addition of the Touch A Life Center, Ghana’s only long-term rehabilitative care center for formerly trafficked children, Touch A Life has provided a space for rescued children to live and receive an education.

“We have 140 children who have gone through our program and currently we have 90 children we’re still responsible for,” Pam said. “Fifty have transitioned through our program or are living on their own.”

A Perfect Match

In late 2009, Audrey Crawford and her husband Stan felt like something was missing. The couple already had four sons and a daughter but they still felt a calling to add one more child to their family in Grove, Okla., the hometown of Arkansas football coach Sam Pittman.

The Crawfords had done mission and dentistry work abroad, so they weren’t opposed to the possibility of adopting a foreign child. Approaching his 50th birthday, Stan discovered that Americans become ineligible to adopt foreign children after turning 50. The couple sprang into action and sought adoption advice from Pam, who was a patient at their dentistry they had grown friendly with. Although Pam rarely helps to facilitate adoptions of children rescued by Touch A Life, she was familiar with the process since she and Randy adopted children of their own.

“She had adopted kids from Cambodia, so I asked her, ‘You rescue kids, do you adopt them out?’” Audrey said. “She said, ‘No, but Randy was just in Ghana and he felt like there was a boy who spoke to his heart. He’s supposed to come to America.’”

Emmanuel was around 4 years old when his work day was interrupted by a boat that pulled up beside his.

“The two people there that day were George, a Ghanian man, and Randy,” Emmanuel said. “(Randy) just felt in his spirit that God told him, ‘That kid right there, he needs to come to America. I have a bigger plan for him and he doesn’t need to be here.’”

After watching a video of Emmanuel following his rescue, Audrey flew to Ghana to meet him in January 2010, shortly after his fifth birthday.

“There was an immediate bond,” she said. “Emmanuel fell asleep in my lap.”

Some may have viewed it as unusual for a white family from northeast Oklahoma to adopt an African boy, but it felt like divine intervention for the Crawfords after they met Emmanuel. It was a long, strenuous process working with the Ghanaian government and U.S. Homeland Security, but in September 2010 – ironically nine months after first meeting Emmanuel – Audrey returned to Oklahoma with another son.

“I never dreamed we would adopt a black boy from Africa because we had four boys and a daughter, so I would’ve chosen a girl,” Audrey said. “It was right just because it was supposed to be.”

The connection felt right to Emmanuel, too.

“I remember meeting my family for the first time and it was just a feeling that you can’t really describe,” he said. “Just meeting my parents and knowing that something wonderful was awaiting. It was just an incredible feeling.”

Finding Sports

Audrey and Stan were hardly the head of a “sports” family. Although Stan enjoyed sports, the couple prided themselves on being more accomplished in academia.

Before Emmanuel ever took a field, Audrey sensed something was different about him. The time he spent working on Lake Volta ingrained an uncanny sense of sight, awareness and direction in him, and it wasn’t long before Audrey learned that he could process and retain information unlike any other child she had ever met.

“We drove to Dallas and went to OU-Texas the week after we got him,” she said. “Two months later, I had to take him to Texas for a Touch A Life fundraiser and he told me what road to go down going down Highway 69 between Oklahoma and Texas. That’s when I first noticed there was something supernatural about him.”

Emmanuel immersed himself into sports by playing soccer with his older brothers, who teased his choice of sport.

“They said, ‘Nobody cares about soccer in the US, especially Oklahoma,’” Audrey said.

“That’s kind of where my competitive edge started coming in was playing soccer,” Emmanuel said. “I was the littlest, youngest kid at home, so I didn’t really do much but I did try to win.”

Despite Audrey’s concerns about Emmanuel playing football, she finally relented after the Little League coaches had begged for her blessing. Little did Audrey know, playing football would help Emmanuel restore his ability to trust.

“Emmanuel couldn’t trust men because when you think about it, I’m sure it was a man that ultimately sold him,” Audrey said. “I’m sure his mother didn’t really sell him into slavery, it was probably a dad. Man enslaved him and made him work, and he has a scar on his eye that’s probably from a man. He didn’t have much trust in men, so his sister and I were probably far easier and softer for him to connect with; but he has a very quiet, steady dad. The Little League coaches were all dads, and there were times he had attitudes and they just diligently were patient. He learned to trust men, and sports were the thing that he learned to take discipline and command and it was for his good not that man was going to bring him harm.”

For Emmanuel, learning to trust meant he needed to forgive.

“I remember one night I was so angry and was basically being a punk to my family, and I felt the Lord telling me, ‘This is all because you still have unforgiveness in your heart you need to let go of. You’re still angry at your birth parents, you’re still angry that you went through that and you need to forgive,’” Emmanuel said during a UA Fellowship of Arkansas podcast in June. “I remember breaking down in my room and crying and basically just pouring it all out – ‘I forgive you for doing this to me and I forgive all of these circumstances and all these things that I had to go through.’

“It was a real moment of growth for me and it changed my perspective. The second that you say, ‘I forgive you and I’m going to show you grace’ is the second that you no longer become a prisoner to that.”

Crawford’s Rise to Stardom

Although he didn’t start every game for the Grove High School varsity football team as a freshman, Emmanuel seized his opportunity to make an immediate mark for the Ridgerunners.

“He didn’t start every game, but he was our leading rusher,” Grove coach Ron Culwell said. “He had pure speed, but he had to learn how to be a running back. He had to learn how to follow his blocks because he’d outrun his blockers a lot of the time. As he developed as a running back and developed more strength, he became the all-around running back that we needed. He could run the ball with power, he could run it inside or outside, and he could catch the ball out of the backfield. He became an all-around back for us.”

Culwell remembers Emmanuel turning in more big performances and clutch runs than he can count. There was the time that Grove faced third-and-short near midfield against Claremore and Emmanuel busted loose for a long touchdown that broke the game open.

“Another play,” Culwell remembers, “in the playoffs against Sapulpa, he had a screen pass where I think he was pinned in on the sideline by five or six Sapulpa players and ended up scoring a 55-yard touchdown. He was just uncanny with his ability to escape and an ability to get loose and in the open. His open-field ability to run was uncanny.”

As a senior, Emmanuel led the Ridgerunners to a 13-1 record and the semifinals of Oklahoma’s 5A playoffs. He rushed for 2,304 yards and 36 touchdowns on 230 carries as a senior, bringing his career total to 6,777 rushing yards – the most in 5A history – and 93 rushing touchdowns and 13 TD receptions. After his senior season, he was named the Gatorade Football Player of the Year in the state of Oklahoma, which goes up to 6A in prep football.

While he made his mark as a football star, Emmanuel was equally beloved by his classmates and the Grove community.

“He’s a great football player, but he’s an even better person,” Culwell said. In 2022, Emmanuel learned that opening up about his own difficult past inspired some of his classmates to confide in him with stories of hardships from their own lives.

“When we started telling my story, the main reason I felt like the Lord was calling me to was because of the state of the world and all the darkness and negativity in the world,” Emmanuel said. “The world just needed something to be a light. After I started telling my story, people reached out to me and kids in my school told me about what was going on in their home lives because they felt comfortable. You never know what kind of doors God’s going to open when you open yourself up to other people and allow God to use you.”

A Call to the Hogs

After a lopsided 49-21 victory over reigning state champion Collinsville during Emmanuel’s senior year, Culwell sent a text to Sam Pittman, a Grove High alum, and informed him there is a player worth looking into at his alma mater.

“I texted coach Pittman to take a look and he said, ‘Coach, we’re going to look at him,’” Culwell said. “I think that’s when he upped his interest in (Emmanuel) a little bit.”

Emmanuel considered his options and weighed his offers. Air Force was an interesting opportunity, but Emmanuel disliked not being able to keep a car on campus.

When he visited Fayetteville, Emmanuel felt at home. 

“I was talking to Vanderbilt, Oklahoma State, I talked to TCU a couple times, and the only campus that I felt a real connection was Arkansas,” he told KTUL in Tulsa during a February 2023 interview. “I had the chance to go on a visit, talked to Sam Pittman and the running backs coach [then Jimmy Smith]. On the car ride home, I was like, ‘I know where I want to be.”

Audrey felt it was easy for her son to connect with Pittman and the Razorbacks coach’s roots in Grove.

“This boy may have huge worldly experiences, but ultimately he’s a small-town boy at heart because of the way he was raised,” Audrey said. “He looked at things and Pittman said, ‘I want a Grove boy.’ That spoke to his heart and was huge to him. He said ‘yes’ because Pittman had never had a Grove boy.” 

After taking a redshirt as a walk-on freshman last fall, Emmanuel has still yet to receive playing time for the Razorbacks. It’s been a frustrating two years for the tailback, who has spent countless hours working to add weight to his 5-foot-10, 175-pound stature.

“These past two years have probably been two of the toughest Emmanuel has gone through,” Audrey said. “His loyalty has been good. He has good days and bad days, but it’s hard. He has the right attitude, but it bothers him and he wants to play more than anything.”

As a walk-on at a loaded position that includes the likes of Ja’Quinden Jackson, Braylen Russell, Rodney Hill and Rashod Dubinion, it’ll be an uphill climb for Emmanuel to crack the depth chart for the Razorbacks.

Culwell last saw Emmanuel over the summer when he returned to Grove to work out. Although the Ridgerunners coach recognizes his former star’s frustration, he has been proud of the way Emmanuel keeps working hard to improve. 

“He just wants to play and he’ll do anything it takes to play,” Culwell said. “He’s been very positive about everything that’s going on at Arkansas. He’s trying to put on weight and he’s been getting stronger and working.”

A Focus on Ghana

Pam returns to Ghana about twice a year to visit the Touch A Life Center and oversee the organization’s progress in Ghana. Although nearly two decades have passed since Touch A Life began focusing on the issues surrounding Lake Volta, child slavery and trafficking around the region persist.

“The root of the problem is poverty and lack of resources, so there’s no judgment,” Pam said. “I’ve been working in Ghana for 18 years, so I understand families find themselves in situations where they feel like they don’t have any other alternative. Sometimes it’s presented to them that a child is going to go and learn a trade. They could be sent to an uncle, but sometimes that’s where they end up being exploited. There are so many different scenarios that I’ve learned working in Ghana the past 18 years, but I don’t pretend to be an expert because I learn something new each time I go.”

Although there is more awareness and are more organizations determined to rectify West Africa’s child slavery problem, there are also naysayers who question whether organizations such as Touch A Life are genuine or examples of “white saviorism,” the act of white individuals who act as they know what is best for Black, Indigenous and People of Color.

“As a founder of an organization, I have always – everyday, all day – said, ‘I hope I don’t cause more problems than I’m trying to do good,’” Pam said. “Until you have traveled to a third-world country and you’ve stepped off a plane and you’re in the minority and you see all of the need – if you can return home to your cushy life and not do anything about it, then OK, good for you. But there are so many needs and I was convicted that I had to try to do something. I didn’t step in with a white savior mentality, I stepped in and have all Ghanaian staff and it’s African led. They set the vision and I try to empower them.”

These are exciting times for Touch A Life. Many children who were rescued as 7 or 8 years old are now graduating college.

“They are going back into their same villages that don’t have clean drinking water and they want to make a difference,” Pam said.

The Crawfords returned to Ghana a year after adopting Emmanuel, and Audrey said she believes Emmanuel feels a calling to help others long after his football career is over.

“We went back a year later and did a health fair,” she said. “That’s Emmanuel’s dream. Honestly, he lays it on the line to the Lord.”

The Crawfords celebrated Emmanuel’s 14-year adoption anniversary in September. And while he is still pushing forward to pursue his dreams, he can’t help but thank God for how far he has come.

“It’s scary to think about what if I wasn’t here?” he told KTUL. “What if I was still in Africa? Would I be alive? What would I be doing right now? It’s a scary thought but at the same time, it really makes you appreciate that you’re here. I’m glad that I’m here thinking about ‘What if I was in Africa?’ and not in Africa thinking, ‘Could life get any worse?’”

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Hear more about Crawford’s amazing story: 

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