It could be your daughter

It could be your daughter, sister, cousin, niece or a friend. 

She is someone’s daughter or sister or friend.

There are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today, more than at any point in history. At least 100,000 children are used in prostitution every year in the United States, with an average age of 13 years old. These are kids that are slaves and cannot walk away.

Human trafficking is the modern day practice of slavery, also known as trafficking in persons, and is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, set to outgrow drug trafficking.

Victims of human trafficking are young children, teenagers, girls and boys, women and men. Victims of human trafficking are subjected to force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor such as domestic servitude, restaurant work, janitorial work, sweatshop factory work and migrant agricultural work.

Traffickers often target children and young women. They routinely trick victims with promises of employment, educational opportunities, marriage, and a better life.

The numbers are simply overwhelming, but each number has a name. Please don’t look the other way, help stop this tragedy here in the USA and around the world.

Although many people think of slavery and enslavement only as something in the past, it isn’t. Not only are we still living with the legacies of historical slavery, but millions of women, children and men around the world are trapped in slavery, today.

Human trafficking is a crime that strips people of their rights, ruins their dreams, and robs them of their dignity. It is a crime that shames us all. Human trafficking is a global problem and no country is immune. It is happening in your city in the USA.

Sex trafficking is one of the most lucrative sectors regarding the illegal trade in people, and involves any form of sexual exploitation in prostitution, pornography, bride trafficking, and the commercial sexual abuse of children. Under international law, any sexually exploited child is considered a trafficking victim, even if no force or coercion is present.

Children in the sex industry are not “prostitutes”; they are child sex trafficking victims. We must treat them as victims.

The Facts

Sex trafficking is the second-largest criminal industry in the world, after drugs and arms, and the fastest growing. The U.S. government estimates that each year as many as 900,000 people (mostly young women and girls) around the world are enslaved as laborers or sex workers. Seventeen to eighteen thousand of them are brought to the United States each year and held against their will. That number does not reflect the number of domestic females that are trafficked within the United States.

American teens usually turn to prostitution as a result of desperation or manipulation by adult pimps who promise love, money and glamour. These girls are unaware of the dangers they face, which include constant violence from pimps and johns, and extreme difficulty exiting the control of a pimp.

Approximately 600,000 children are believed to be at-risk for sexual exploitation in the U.S. Most prostituted women/girls have endured sexual abuse at the hands of a trusted family member or close friend and studies indicate that abused children are 28 times more likely to be arrested for sex trafficking than those who were not abused. Close to 450,000 children run away from home each year and one out of every three teens on the street will be trafficked within 48 hours of leaving home.

It has been said that every ill that society has can be found in the prostituted woman; homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, illiteracy, abortion, sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence, suicidal tendencies and child welfare issues. That does not mean that every prostituted woman has every vice. However, this does indicate why they are usually very complex people and that it takes a very long time for their healing to be complete.

For example, it is not unusual that if a woman or girl has been trafficked for only two to three years that she has endured more than a dozen abortions at the hands of her traffickers. Most of us know someone who has had at least one abortion or possibly two and the trauma that they have encountered in trying to recover. Or we know someone who has been raped and the painful recovery process they have gone through. Trafficked women and girls are raped repeatedly multiple times per day.

Fifteen percent of all suicide attempts involved those engaged in prostitution and seventy-five percent of all people who are prostituted either attempt or commit suicide. It is very important for the non-therapist to see the warning signs, be able to apply suicide prevention first aid and then get them to a professional for help and to transition back into society.

Definition of Human Trafficking

In 2000, the U.S. Congress passed a landmark piece of legislation that, for the first time, recognized the plight of those who have been sold around the world.   The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) [18 U.S.C. Sections 1589-1594] no longer saw women and girls who have been prostituted as criminals but instead as victims.   TVPA provides prevention efforts, assistance for victims, and the prosecution of offenders.

The difference between smuggling and trafficking lies in a person's freedom of choice.   An individual may choose be to smuggled into a country but the situation changes if the person then becomes exploited by taking away their freedom.

Three Elements of Trafficking

Process:
Recruiting, harboring, moving, obtaining, or maintaining a person

Means: 
By force, fraud or coercion

End:
For involuntary servitude, debt bondage, slavery or sex trade

A Trafficker's Profits:

A trafficker in the Washington, D.C. area generally makes $3,000 per woman/girl a week. Multiply that by 52 weeks in the year and he/she is making more than $150,000. The group of women that the trafficker has is called his/her stable and there are usually six to eight women/girls in his/her stable at a time.   Now, do the math, and that adds up to $1,248,000 a year of unreported cash per trafficker! It is very unlikely that the women/girls get any of the profits and they are not treated well while in the trafficker's care.