Making my way through the hundreds and hundreds of stories in my human trafficking feeds, I found this – “Human trafficking a modern scourge.“
The humans being trafficked and forced to work as prostitutes in New Jersey were from Mexico and Honduras. They were either promised marriage or decent wages if they moved to America, but instead they were forced into a life of prostitution. These are young girls, children by definition. And let me repeat, they were FORCED into this life, into a form of modern slavery we call sex trafficking. They were brutally exploited for the sake of profits. That is what makes this next quote so hard to to understand.
“These cases are tough,” Brian Hayes, an FBI agent in Atlantic City said. “They are tough because the victims in child prostitution cases by definition are committing a crime. And they have a distrust of law enforcement. Just as illegal immigrants distrust law-enforcement, prostitutes distrust law-enforcement because they don’t want to get arrested.”
Read that again: “Victims in CHILD prostitution cases by definition are committing a crime.” I’ve read this over and over and I can’t reconcile this in my mind. They call the CHILD a VICTIM and then say the VICTIM is committing a crime?
No wonder we have a problem. Child sex traffickig is one of the most evil forms of modern slavery. It would be more accurate to call it “rape for profit.” The pimps are slave owners and the clients are pedophiles. And the brutalized, exploited CHILD VICTIM is committing a crime?
I want to scream.
Jeff Turner (@respres)
J
krkbaker
Shelley Seale
May 9th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
It’s absolutely horrible.
We have a young mother’s home locally that has taken in young girls sold into servitude, impregnated by one of the dozens of men she’s made to service and left, broken, on the street when she’s not longer of use.
Human trafficking is everyone’s problem and it’s in every back yard.
May 9th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Thanks for stopping by, Chris. I’m still shocked by the ubiquity of this problem and the ridiculous road blocks that sometimes stand in the way of solving the problem. I’m thankful for homes like the one your describe. They are doing more than just screaming.
May 10th, 2009 at 3:05 am
Jeff, speaking out for these girls and trying to put a stop to it? That’s an excellent Mother’s Day present. Thank you.
January 13th, 2010 at 6:06 am
I think its horrible how little the country cares about this problem and i think we should stop worring about other countrys problems and deal with our own
January 13th, 2010 at 9:03 am
Damien, the world isn’t flat anymore. We can’t solve our problems here in the US by concentrating solely on the US.
January 14th, 2010 at 5:43 am
but how can we solve our problems if we’re working on solving everyone else’s problem maybe we shouldn’t worry about mainly us but mainly one problem at a time