Human Sex Trafficking of US Minors (Part 1) Chuck Norris | Oct 22, 2013

Human Sex Trafficking of US Minors (Part 1) Chuck Norris | Oct 22, 2013 Reuters reported last week, "Some 30 million people are enslaved worldwide, trafficked into brothels, forced into manual labour, victims of debt bondage or even born into servitude." A percentage is represented in all 162 countries, with almost half being in India. And many would be surprised to discover that the U.S. sexual slavery market is growing -- in and outside our country -- using none other than American minors. Americans trafficking Americans. ABC News reported in July on a National Geographic undercover investigation of sexual slavery in the U.S.: "When some people hear about sex trafficking in America they usually think of Asian and Eastern European women being brought into the States, but it's actually 10 times more likely for an American girl to be trafficked inside the U.S. Further, almost 300,000 American children are at risk for trafficking into the sex industry, according to U.S. Department of State statistics." About 14,500 to 17,500 girls from other countries are smuggled into the U.S. and exploited in sexual slavery. The U.S. Department of Justice says the average age at which females -- domestic and international -- start prostitution in the U.S. is between 12 and 14 years, and those older than 12 are leading targets for sexual exploitation by organized crime units. The FBI further explains that boys and transgender youths begin prostituting between the ages of 11 and 13 on average. And where are they all marketed? Most know how they are paraded on the streets by pimps, controlled by violent gangs and organized crime, and marketed through residential brothels and businesses such as strip clubs, escort services and massage parlors. But the greatest and most recent proliferation has been through the Internet. Malika Saada Saar, president of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, explained that there is a "cyber slave market that is being built up by Craigslist and other websites" (for example, dating and hooking up sites and online escort services), and most who buy and sell these girls are never arrested or jailed. In July, however, the FBI conducted raids in 76 cities, arrested 150 pimps and rescued 105 children from their sexual and abusive rings -- the youngest of whom was only 9 years old. The Blaze reported that "Detroit saw the most pimps arrested, while the largest numbers of children rescued were in San Francisco, Detroit, Milwaukee, Denver and New Orleans." The Blaze also noted how 2,700 children have been rescued by the FBI since 2003 under its Innocence Lost initiative, in partnership with the nonprofit group the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Moreover, roughly 1,350 convictions of sex traders have been brought about by the FBI. Many of the convicted got "lengthy sentences," and 10 received life sentences. The FBI reported: "Today, the business of human sex trafficking is much more organized and violent. These women and young girls (and boys) are sold to traffickers, locked up in rooms or brothels for weeks or months, drugged, terrorized, and raped repeatedly. These continual abuses make it easier for the traffickers to control their victims. The captives are so afraid and intimidated that they rarely speak out against their traffickers, even when faced with an opportunity to escape." Sex trafficking victim Chong Kim shared just how intense it was during her couple of years of captivity: "The first year I was in there, I literally became numb; I thought I was going to die as a sex slave. ... When I started to become defiant with the traffickers, the traffickers would look at the girls we were close to, and with that, they would actually tie us to a chair and make us watch the girl that we were close to or the child we were close to get tortured, sodomized and raped for hours and hours on end. We went through beatings; we were held in the bathtub with ice." (Kim's story, now put into the award-winning film "Eden," is proof of how ethnic sexual slavery can be easily overlooked and victims can be carted around the heartland of America without ever being noticed.) The Justice Department estimates that of the roughly 450,000 U.S. children who run away from home each year, at least one-third of teens end up homeless and lured toward prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home. This is another reason it is so imperative that the lost are found quickly. Shared Hope International (http://sharedhope.org), whose mission is to eradicate sex trafficking, has a helpful website with many great resources to help you help others caught in the webs of sexual slavery, including a section in which you can view report cards for how your state is doing in the fight against human trafficking. The website for the Polaris Project (http://www.polarisproject.org), a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization working exclusively on the issue of human trafficking, also has a state-by-state map that you can click on and access in-depth information and resources in your area. The Polaris Project also provides the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, which is a toll-free hotline available for calls and texts from anywhere in the country 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year. Call it at 888-373-7888, or text "help" or "info" to BE-FREE (233733). In Part 2, I will address what specifically entices adolescents to sex trafficking, as well as discuss an industry that is perhaps the greatest perpetrator of it and tell the inspirational story about how one woman escaped it after seven years. Chuck Norris    Chuck Norris is a columnist and impossible to kill.   Carl Ray Louk Not racist, not violent, just not silent anymore Fighting for lower taxes, less government, and more freedom. 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