She’s tired, because she’s been up all night, every night for
almost as long as she can remember. She’s cold, because the room she’s in has
little more than a bed in it, and the window doesn’t close all the way. She’s
sore, because the last john hit her across the face when she didn’t move fast
enough. She’s hungry, because she’s still growing, and today she realized that
her clothes don’t fit very well anymore. She’s thirteen years old, but she
feels like she’s a hundred.
This little girl could live anywhere in the world. She could be
from Himalaya, sold by her unwitting parents to be used by men in Indian
cities. She could be from a small village in Ghana, kidnapped and forced to service
men on the shores of Lake Volta. She could be a Ukrainian girl, promised a job
and a better life and finding only debt slavery and prostitution on her arrival
to London. She could be an American runaway, an abandoned and unloved girl
regurgitated so many times by the foster care system that they finally lost
her, and it was a pimp that found her.
Most of us learn what hookers are pretty early in life, even
though we may not completely understand at first. They’re in movies, in books;
sometimes bright and hopeful, sometimes degraded and trashy, and always the butt
of some joke or a transparent plot device. We see it in magazines, on
billboards-images of women being dominated or controlled. In a country that
over-glorifies sex and image and lives to sell the next big thing, prostitution
always sells. What is there to worry about; it’s not liked the
movies/books/pictures are real. The
truth is a bit more complicated than what it’s painted to be, though, and the
truth of the matter is that sexual trafficking and exploitation is as big of a
problem in the United States as it is anywhere else-and it’s one that very few
people are talking about it.
Sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation is a world-wide
epidemic, and is the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the world. There is
no corner of the world that is not touched by this plague. 2012 statistics report
that as many as 20.9 million adults and children yearly are bought and sold
into commercial sexual servitude, forced labor or bonded labor. Women and girls
make up 98% of the victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation. They are
promised a better life, a job, a home-and all they receive is a forced
introduction to the world’s oldest profession.
The United States is not an innocent bystander in all of this. In
2013, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline received reports
of over 3,000 sex trafficking cases inside the U.S. Sex trafficking in the
United States operates on the streets and off. Fake massage parlors, online
escort services, strip clubs and brothels provide permanent places of business,
while the classic haunts of prostitution-motels, truck stops and street corners
serve as more transitory options.
According to www.traffickingresourcecenter.org,
“In street-based sex trafficking, victims are often expected to earn a nightly
quota, ranging from $500 to $1,000 or more, which is confiscated by the pimp.
Women in brothels disguised as massge businesses typically live on-site where
they are coerced into providing commercial sex with 6 to 10 men a day, seven
days a week.”
Are the prostitutes to blame? Who are these people who sell
themselves? Of course there are always those who make the choice themselves to
engage in prostitution, but regardless of your rhetoric detailing women’s
choice and feminism, becoming a prostitute is no one’s first option. Most
people (outside of Amsterdam, I’d assume) do not enter this profession
voluntarily-they are victims, lied to, coerced, enslaved, and abused both physically
and sexually. Many victims of trafficking and exploitation aren’t even of age:
in the United States, runaways and homeless youth are the most common victims of
exploitation.
In the case of child sexual exploitation, the statistics are
alarming. One study estimates 30% of shelter youth and 70% of street youth are victims
of commercial sexual exploitation. They may engage or be coerced into
prostitution for “survival sex” to meet daily needs for food, shelter or drugs.
A history of physical and sexual abuse is common among victims, and 75% of
minors engaged in prostitution are under the control of a pimp.
These pimps are always on the lookout for new children, and prey
on victims as young as 12-14 years old. Many times, they are willing to invest
a surprising amount to break down their victim’s natural resistance and
suspicion. If they succeed in winning the child’s trust, this investment can be
returned many times over; it’s estimated that pimps make hundreds of thousands
of dollars selling children every year.
Pimps buy presents, provide a place to stay, and give emotional
support-all without revealing their true intent. Causing the child to believe
that the pimp truly loves and cares for them, as well as using threats, drugs,
and violence, causes what’s called a ‘trauma-bond,’ where the victim feels
trapped and powerless. It can be very difficult for children to break free of
this bond.
Today in the U.S., the Federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act
defines the crime of human trafficking as:
A. The recruitment,
harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose
of a commercial sex act where such an act is induced by force, fraud, or
coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained
18 years of age, or
B. The recruitment,
harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or
services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of
subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
This important piece of legislation makes it easier to prosecute
both ‘johns’ (those that pay for the services of prostitutes) and pimps, while
subsequently protecting minor victims of sexual exploitation. Although a
negative attitude continues towards prostitutes who have reached the age of
majority, minors who have commercially sexually exploited are not required to
prove to the court force, fraud or coercion; the age of the victim is
considered to be sufficient cause for conviction. This distinction is necessary
to both more freely prosecute those truly guilty as well as to decriminalize the
minor victims of sex trafficking and exploitation.
While this law is an important step for America, there are still
many children and youth that need help. Resources are being put into place to
reach out to likely victims, but it is a painfully slow process that is only
now gaining momentum. Countries such as Sweden, Norway, and Iceland have taken
monumental measures in decriminalizing prostituted persons and criminalizing
their buyers, measures which have reduced street prostitution and sex
trafficking in their countries. Along with stricter laws that prosecute johns
and pimps while protecting their victims, what America largely lacks is awareness.
The thing that stands out most to me about the statistic I shares
is how starved these children are for affection. These are children who have
been rejected. They may have been cast off from their parents, sometimes at
birth or at a young age. Maybe they were in foster care and ran ways because of
abuse or mistreatment. Maybe they have a parent who doesn’t want them, or is
too high to care about them. Maybe their parent is in jail. So they turn to
someone who seems to care, only to find out too late that they have been
betrayed by their own need for love. By then, they are trapped in a list that
they can’t get out of, trained to lie, obey, and take whatever comes at them
because, what other choice do they have?
We all know people like this. We know kids that make us wonder
about their home lives, about what they do when no one is around. We know the
questions we “should,” as polite people, ask, and which ones we shouldn’t. But
what if we began to ask the hard questions? What if we opened our eyes to the
possibility that horrible things could be happening to people we know? What if
we decided to care?
This blog, this series is nothing more than a battle cry for
awareness. We live in a twisted world, and the bad stuff is closer to home than
we may want to believe. You have to decide for yourself if you’re going to act,
or stay silent and condemn others with your inactivity.
What you don’t know may not be hurting you,
but it’s definitely hurting them.
“…Truly I
tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters
of mine, you did for me.” Matthew 25:40
Reading List
for this Post
Girls Like Us Rachel Lloyd
Not for Sale David Batstone
The White Umbrella Mary Frances Bowley
Trafficked: The Diary of a Sex Slave Sibel Hodge
Sources
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