The Plight of Women and Children in the US and Around the World
The victims often are beaten, threatened, forced to have abortions, contract HIV, and (it goes w/o saying) are kept against their will. CIA estimates place the rate of trafficked women and children brought into the country between 50,000 and 100,000 every year. Thats enough to completely fill two stadiums at Oriole Park in Camden Yards and still not have enough seats for everyone.
The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women did a study in 2001 that found similarities between the ethnicity of a region and the preferred nationality of female slaves. This makes for a widespread problem since the United States is a homogenous country made up of descendants of people from all over the world. So in America, we wind up having slaves coming from too many countries to have specific laws and procedures to deal with the unique obstacles to preventing and halting these criminals and their captives.
If we approach the problem on a more international level, the situation becomes only more grave. In Asia many towns have "recruiters" that look out for girls that could be targeted and then lie to get them to wherever it is that the recruiter will get the best deal for the girl. Most are taken from rural areas in deep poverty with the belief they are going on a short trip, to be married, or to some sort of better life. It's often this severe poverty that lead parent to sell their 13 and 14 year old daughters into sexual slavery. Some parents are made to believe they are giving their daughter away to be married but that is not always the case. Often times the parents receive a monthly allowance from the Mama-san/Madam for their child's forced labor, while the daughter is not permitted to keep any herself. If the girls do manage to get out somehow, they sometimes unwittingly return to their family's who sold them into slavery in the first place. What should be a happy homecoming for these young girls is instead overshadowed by their parent's anxieties about losing the monthy stipend and possibly a return to the hands of the recruiters.
Women can also be recommended by other people in thier personal lives. Wives who fail to bear a male child may be sold by their in-laws or husband. Friends of the family in need of some quick cash have been known to do so as well. In other parts of the world also riddled by poverty, parents will send their sons and daughters out onto the streets in order to pimp them out to western tourists. Other times runaways and street orphans as young as ten will be (easily) talked into joining sex and child-pornography rings to give male tourists and the wealthy a good time when they come to town. (Not a slavery issue, but similar: of the 1.3 million street kids in the United States, half of them prostitute themselves in the first 48 hours).
How could such a horrific problem become so widespread and still seem to be overlooked by most of the media? What can be done? And what is the cause? Is there even a single cause? Probably not. And if you could make it into one cause it would be too general to be useful. But complexity does not justify ignoring such an important aspect of the phenomenon, especially when it is vital to ending enslavement once and for all. (Coming Soon)
www.protectionproject.org
www.vday.org
www.usdoj.gov/trafficking.htm
To Help Kids and Teens at Risk
www.standupforkids.org