As a society, we have to begin to label crimes accurately. Is a teen who is reported missing by her family, kidnapped and forced to work in an underground brother guilty of prostitution or a victim of human trafficking? Both can’t be true.
Children forced into sexual service are not being held by “pimps.” Pimp is a word that has lost it’s negative power. These children are being held by slave traders. This problem might be treated differently if we can change the words we use to describe it.
“As if ignoring all those red flags wasnt bad enough, the LAPD actually arrested a 17-year-old girl, who by virtue of her age is automatically a trafficking victim. The girl had even been reported missing by her family. Yet somehow, it didnt occur to the LAPD that if one trafficking victim was kidnapped and forced to work at Club 907, perhaps others were as well.” via Change.org.
Stop Child Slavery 
This is definitely not fair! More needs to be done in terms of educating both the public and public officials, so that they can deal with these cases in a less obtrusive manner. They see these kids as criminals instead of victims, and when that happens, kids will be less likely to confide in the law, who is supposed to protect them. Where can these kids turn if the law thinks they are criminals and liars?
Excellent point. How we “label” this is important on so many levels.
Agreed on both previous comments.
I believe a key word, since words so often carry such power, is “forced.” If I am approached, at gunpoint, with the perceived threat of death or serious wounding (whether verbally or just by the action of the gun being pointed at me with a directive) and told to steal a candy bar from a convenience store, then I can not be arrested for theft.
That’s exactly what happens with some of these youth and young women.
If you are “forced” to do something, then you are not acting on your own volition, but at the whim of others at the potential threat of loss of life. To be arrested and found guilty on top of that? Absolutely horrible and disheartening.
Dug
http://thf2.wordpress.com
I did my first 2 l/2 hour program on child kidnapping/child slavery on July 17, 1991 on the Jan Michaelson show on WHO talk radio Des Moines, with Lee Orr KC Homicide Detetive, Dr Judi-Anne Densen-Gerber and Ted Gunderson, former head of the L. A.FBI, me John M. Zielinski and Noreen Gosch whose son Johnny was kidnapped. We all had investigated the Nebraska Legislative Investigation that turned up evidence of the kidnap and child prostitution network involving CIA primarily with assistance from the FBI–see Franklin Cover-up by John DeCamp. who served 16 years in the Nebraska Unicameral and was a Boyss Town Boy. When and the legislature realized they were being prostituted to members of the U.S Congress, they went to the FBI only to be threatened if they did not shut down the investigation. DeCamp used his own money to by full page ads in the Omaha World Herald, and the Lincoln Star. Go to Franklincase. org and watch “Conspiracy of Silence” then view the film about me called Zielinski which won best Political Documentary of 2011 at Philadelphia Independent Film Festival. Shown across the U.S. and Germany, but not in Iowa were I am blacklisted because as a long time publisher I tried to expose the CIA’s drug trafficking money laundering operation in Iowa. John M. Zielinski