Human Trafficking
Catherine Norris pd. 2
The Facts
Sex trafficking is the illegal buying and selling of women and children for sex. Around the world, children and young women are kidnapped or forced into prostitution. It's trafficking, when women and children are forced into sex acts, exploitation, and often are bought and sold internationally or across state lines. Human trafficking has become the second most profitable industry, right after drug trafficking.Traffickers will use drugs to keep their victims from leaving and having them become addicted so that they will keep performing sex acts for the their profit. Many Americans have heard of human trafficking in other parts of the world like Thailand, Cambodia, Latin America and eastern Europe (these are trafficked illegally), but few people know it happens here in the United States also. The FBI estimate that over 100,000 children and young women are trafficked in America today. They range from the ages of 9 to 19, with the average age being 11. Some cases its not just women and girls but also boys and men.
The Horrors
Imagine you go to a party or a club. You go out to have a good time. You never expect the have your drink roofied and to wake up in a strange room with no memory of how you got there or where you are. The thought of being threatened, beaten, raped, starved, and forced to do sexual favors never crossed your mind. Or how about when you leave your house and go into your driveway or walk around town, you never expect to be lured and captured by these predators. You never wanted to be drugged and gang raped. When you try to leave this slavery your life is threatened, but by that time the vile men/women that took you have broken you and you just want to the pain and suffering to end. When the threats to you don't work they go after your family. So you stay to either save yourself or your family. It gets to a point where you become numb, a shell of the person you used to be. You get sold repeatedly and have unspeakable things done to you, but you grow numb to the pain and filthiness you feel all over you. When you truly stop believing in that sliver of hope that you will make it out of this alive or that your suffering will eventually end, when you give up is when you really lose yourself to this vulgar life. That slim chance of escape is what will drive you to keep hoping and plotting for a way out. To hope that someone out there hasn't forgotten you and if fighting for you. Because if you are one of the few lucky enough that escape alive the horrid life you were forced into, you will never be the same and will need you people in your life who won't let you go ever again.
Work Cited
Catherine Norris
Ms. Sariego
20th Century American Culture pd. 2
18 September 2014