A soldier talks about her journey into human trafficking rescue.
Erika Clark is a young, Air Force intelligence analyst whose career was ended by a knee injury and now works with trafficked children in the Washington DC area. The trafficked children are shuttled on a circuit between U.S. cities to avoid detection in the sex trade, where pimps put them on the street and force them to perform sex acts with approximately eight to ten men a night. The lifespan for a trafficked child after entering “the life” is around seven years before they’re killed or die from AIDS.
“I love them so much because they are no different than I am,” said Clark. “There’s absolutely nothing I’ve done, nothing about my character that makes me any more virtuous or any better than these girls that are working as prostitutes.”
The average age a child becomes prostitute in the USA is 13 years old and it’s estimated that 293,000 children in the USA could be trafficked, with the vast majority being girls. Portland, Oregon has become a sex trafficking capital of the United States, but Atlanta, Houston, Toledo, New York City, Washington DC, Miami, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Kansas City and Los Angeles are competitors. It’s rife in every major city. According to the FBI, sex trafficking is the fastest-growing business of organized crime and the third-largest criminal enterprise in the world.
Trafficking humans is not limited to smuggling people across international borders. Legally, anyone bought or sold through threat, force or coercion, put into the lifestyle against their will, is a trafficked person. Anyone who has a pimp, he’s a trafficker.
Trafficking rescue, a dangerous career
Clark was adrift and miserable after medically separated from her 10-year career in the military and she flopped about on her sofa for weeks, unsure of what to do next. She had a degree in security and intelligence with a minor in Middle Eastern studies, and studied Farsi at the Defense Language Institute in California. After six years of enlistment, she had been accepted into a Navy Intelligence Officer commissioning program and had been deployed to Qatar, where the summer temperature averages 130 degrees.
After her separation, Clark was unsure what the Navy intended for her and if she needed to start a new life. Was it time for her and her soldier husband to buy a house and start a family, could she continue with the Navy or should she start a new career? She selected the sofa and in her words, “feeling sorry for myself.”
Her husband Jaimie, deployed in Afghanistan, suggested that she find something to occupy her time so she wouldn’t be so upset about her ruptured career.
“So I was like gosh, if I could do anything, what would I do?” said Clark. “I wasn’t really sure because I’d been in the military my whole life since I was 18, so I really didn’t have any idea about what I could do if I could pick.”
Clark had always been passionate about human rights and began to look at non-profit organizations. Among her explorations, she attended a fund-raiser for a Washington DC shelter for rescued minor prostitutes founded by a woman formerly trafficked as child. After learning about the organization, Clark bought the founder a drink, told her she wanted to be part of the fight and was offered the job of personal assistant.
The former soldier began her trafficking work with only clerical duties, setting up meetings and filing papers, but the girls’ stories sent her into tears, daily.
“My boss initially wouldn’t let me interact with any of the clients because she said bursting into tears is not very helpful to them, which is true,” said Clark.
After six months, she began to direct client service training (the girls are called clients), and then she began to work on the hotline and in street outreach.
For a while, Clark’s husband was not OK with her choice of work and particularly uncomfortable about the DC street outreach, which is obviously dangerous. Jaimie drove her the 45 minutes from Annapolis into DC, even shadowed her as she walked “the track,” connecting with the young girls. All out-reach workers are required to take a self-defense class every quarter of the year to protect them from retaliation and violence, and eventually Jaimie began to instruct them.
“Jaimie was raised by a single mom and has several little sisters, so he’s really passionate about women not being defenseless,” said Clark. “He teaches the outreach workers to flip him and kick him and punch him and he comes home all beaten up, but he loves it because he really wants these women to be prepared.
He’s very supportive of it now, but he’s worried about my safety. He says that’s what he loves about me, that I’ve always been very passionate about fighting for people who are oppressed, so it’s something he loves about me, but it makes him nervous.”
♦◊♦
Q: What do you do on street outreach?
Clarke: We went out on Friday and Saturday nights. We’d identify potential victims, potential traffickers and had outreach material that we’d try to give to the girls, but we can’t obviously, if there are any pimps around or any watchers. We had to stay very situationally aware of what was going on in order not to cause problems for the girls.
Q: What’s a watcher?
Clark:They’re people that have been paid off. Often they’re homeless people, because they’re not particularly loyal to one thing or another. Say a pimp has six girls, they call it a “stable,” he can’t keep his eye on all of them at the same time. So if they’re out working, he’ll pay a homeless guy like ten bucks to keep an eye on the girls and tell him if they’re talking to anyone, what they’re doing, so that the girls know they’re always being watched.
When they’re working, these girls don’t just stay in DC, they travel around. A pimp will have little pimp friends all around the country and they go from state to state. The girls we talk to, some are from Miami, Cincinnati, they’re from everywhere, which helps divert law enforcement because you don’t see the same girls all the time and it makes it harder to outreach to them because the girls are different all the time.
Q: So they can’t develop local connections either.
Clark:Definitely not, because they live with the pimp and the other girls in “the stable,” which is wherever they’re being held. He treats them like livestock and he tells them that they are. There’s a head girl and she’ll often collect money for him and kind of be his female counterpart. But the problem is these girls are fighting to be the pimp’s No. 1 girl because sometimes she can sleep in the bed with him or ride in the front seat of the car. They all think they’re in love with their pimp.
This is a very American thing, not with girls from other countries. The girls I worked with from DC, they all thought their pimps were their friends, so they compete with the other women for the affection of this one man. It’s a really messed-up situation.
Q: I don’t get this. Why do they think that this older man who is selling them for sex with other men is their boyfriend?
Clark:Usually what happens is there’s a runaway or a girl comes from a bad family situation, there are a lot of broken homes obviously, and the pimp will befriend them. If you or I saw this, we’d think it was incredibly inappropriate, but these are very impressionable young girls and there’s a 35 year-old man talking to this 12-year-old telling her, “Oh, you’re so pretty, you’re so smart,” just filling whatever she’s insecure about, building her up.
So, inevitably when the girl gets into a fight with her parents he really fans the flame of feeling—“He understands me, he cares about me.” Then he’ll take her out and buy her clothes, take her to dinner, courting-like rituals, and he’ll coerce her to leave her house and stay with him and this is the “honeymoon” phase.
Then about three or four weeks in he’ll say, “We need to make some money. We’ve been spending all this money and I don’t have any and my friend here says if you have sex with him he’ll give me ‘X’ money and we can pay the rent, I think you should.”
Obviously, this girl is not okay with that because many of them are virgins in the first place. Then he arranges the “seasoning” period, a period of time when the girl is getting raped by however many people it takes. He’ll bring her to a restaurant where he knows a bunch of people and in the kitchen, this little girl is raped by eight men in a row, things like that. Then he blames it on her, very similar to a domestic abuse situation, and he’ll say, “Why did you make me do that? I’ve done so much for you and I’ve asked only one thing and you couldn’t even do that!”
So, she’s feeling that he loves her so much and she couldn’t perform anything for him and that she deserved all of that. Sometimes it has to happen more than once, but eventually the girl just feels so impure and dirty that she won’t even ask for help because she feels like she wouldn’t be accepted back into her family because she’s fallen so far from who she was. Once she’s realizes that she’s a prostitute now and not going back to eighth grade, she’s in shock and traumatized. Then she’s introduced to the stable. The girls that have been there longer usually do a lot of her training and handle logistics.
Pimping is glamorized. People think Pretty Woman when they think prostitution, which is completely inaccurately represented. At the Washington DC library last summer, they had a “Pimp out your library card!” promotion. People don’t know what pimping really looks like, but it’s seeped into our vernacular and it’s glamorized here more than in any other country.
Q: What about school?
Clark: Usually they’re removed from school, but it depends. In Atlanta, these pimps might have one residence in the inner city, but they usually also have a really nice house in a good part of town. A scary part about this is that you think you’re safe because you live in the suburbs and put your kids in a good school system so they can be protected from these things. But some of these pimps will actually put some of their girls into these good public schools and use his legitimate home address. These girls attend the public high schools and they groom younger girls in the schools completely under the nose of everybody—teachers, parents—they just think this senior girl is befriending your freshman daughter. She might give her a present, spend time with her and eventually she’s groomed right into the life.
Q: Prostitution and pimping fills a lot of content on primetime TV and the expressions have worked into everyday language and men, boys and even suburban girls regularly refer to girls and women as “hos” and “bitches.” What do you make of that?
Clark: My only idea of why women use those words to each other now is like how the African culture has kind of taken the “n” word back, so it’s not offensive when they speak to each other. It’s because it was such a derogatory word for such a long time. But even though we’re in a post-modern, feminist age in America, we still have Puritanical roots, so to challenge a woman’s purity still is a really deep offense even if she is more promiscuous. To call a woman a slut or a whore or imply any of those things like dirty or impure is still very offensive to women.
Q: Why don’t these girls jump on a bus and go back to their families and teachers?
Clark:When you’re trafficked and that young, and first of all, if you’re an American, you don’t even know you’re trafficked. Second, you don’t know if anyone’s looking for you or really cares because your pimp is telling you that you’re a whore and stuff.
Q: In the USA, what’s the penalty for trafficking and what’s the penalty for a john?
Clark: It’s by state and it’s a hot topic. The punishment is very lenient even if you get a conviction and to get a conviction you have to prove an awful lot to prove that a girl was trafficked. One of the biggest issues is getting these girls to testify. They usually suffer from Stockholm syndrome, where people who have been abused over a period of time feel attached to the perpetrator.
The thing about trafficked girls in America is that they love their pimps. They think he’s their boyfriend and that they’re going to marry their pimp once they earn some arbitrary amount of money—$120,000 I heard last time—and they’ll get married and live happily ever after. They don’t understand that they’re victims when we first get a hold of them and they’re pissed off that you’re not letting them talk to their boyfriend. They think you’re holding them away from their true love and they’re very upset about it, so they’re definitely not testifying against him in court. Convictions are extremely rare.
And for the johns, all they have to do is go to “john school,” which is this four-hour Saturday class that costs like $300. They’re supposed to be learning to respect women and not buy prostitutes and if they attend john school it goes off their record. They’re rarely arrested. There’s still a mentality that prostitution is a victimless crime. They see a girl that’s working and first of all, they think she’s 18 and second, that she’s there by choice and wasn’t coerced or forced.
Q: Do cops hit on these young girls too?
Clark: Yes, it’s going on. Not all police officers, but in any profession there’s going to be some bad apples. A lot of times this girl is about to get arrested or she gets arrested and put in a car and he gives her the option of going to jail or not.
Q: Is there a connection between prostitution and sporting events?
Clark: Yes, the Super Bowl, the World Cup, any large sporting event, they have a lot of trafficked women, unfortunately, around those events. They know that’s where the business will be.
One problem with prostitution, especially in Africa and parts of Southeast Asia, is that there’s more of a demand to be sure that the girls are HIV free. So the movement has been toward younger and younger girls and children to ensure that they are not infected.
There’s also a belief in South Africa and Namibia that the way to cure yourself from AIDS is to have sex with a virgin. So to make sure that she’s a virgin you have men raping toddlers—like two year-olds they will rape because they think they’ll be free from AIDS. But of course, that’s not how it works and now this little girl has HIV, too. Also, in South Africa, younger girls will have a sugar daddy situation with a much older man and that’s how the HIV is coming into the younger population.
Q: When you worked with child trafficking abroad, how was it different than in the USA?
Clark: The trend I noticed the most was the way the girls are trafficked in each country. In America, generally it’s coercion. Very rarely will you have a girl that’s kidnapped walking home from school. It happens, but not nearly as commonly as the relationship with the pimp and the grooming.
In Cambodia, it’s so impoverished. We were teaching English to some children in Phnom Penh in the slum area and one day, one of the little girls was missing from class. We found out her brother sold her to a trafficker—her own brother, not even her parents. What gives a brother the authority to do something like that? She was seven and he was older, maybe 12. We assumed she went to Thailand. We didn’t ever find her.
There’s a lot of that in Cambodia because there’s such a crushing poverty. Mom’s a garbage picker and dad’s high or drunk all the time and the kids can’t even go to school because you have to pay to go to public school in Cambodia. They’re so vulnerable, like sitting ducks.
In Thailand, a lot of their parents were involved in it. Often these girls come from the villages and they get trafficked into the city either by an aunt or uncle or trafficker. What they do is go into villages and say, we have this great job and we’re looking for young ladies to work there—we have a new factory, or a fish company, or we need waitresses. The parents get some kind of living stipend sent back from the girls and they believe that’s what their daughters are going to go do. They aren’t educated people, they may be fishing people in a fishing village, so a lot of times the parents are involved.
India was incredibly violent and you’d hear horrible stories. These girls are on a train and they wake up and all of a sudden they’re in a brothel because they got drugged and just taken. There was the most snatching of girls in India of all the places I’ve been, and also in the surrounding countries where the girls get brought into India.
Q: If a guy goes to a travel agency in the USA, can he get book an overseas trip for a sex tour involving minors?
Clark: Obviously not an ethical travel agent, but there definitely are travel agencies that will book sex tours and trips, but they don’t advertise. Usually these men find out about sex excursions like that from other men and use the same travel service. Men operate together, so they teach other and encourage each other in trafficking. If you can change the heart of one man, so many girls are spared.
People still don’t think that human trafficking occurs in America. They think it’s something that happens to those poor little girls in Thailand, but they don’t understand that it happens to poor little girls in America too.
In America, these girls are required to make a quota every night. They’ll be out on the street all night until five in the morning and they’ll do in-call, out-call all day long, the Craig’s List stuff, basically pimps bringing them to hotels or johns are coming to them in hotels. Some girls are minors working in strip clubs in America and they’re trafficked. The clubs that usually have trafficked girls are a little bit shadier and the danger level goes up when you go into those places.
According to prostitutes, the trend with men is that they’ve become incredibly violent and more perverse. As porn becomes more violent and exploitive, so have men’s sexual appetites and these little prostitutes are paying for it. There’s more violence, punching, hitting, bruising, making these girls bleed and that applies to children as well.
Q: What do the rescued girls do at the shelter?
Clark: The girls in recovery are home-schooled because they may have been out of a school for a few years and are behind. They may do art, yoga, dance or karate. They make jewelry and sell it online. They give them the freedom to be little and they try to see what it is that makes each girl come alive, encourage them to dream again.
Trafficking is not just a women’s issue, and it’s not like the girls even keep any of the money. They say prostitution is the oldest profession and it’s always been accepted, but I say look at William Wilberforce—he took down the trans-Atlantic slave trade. That was totally legal and it was a very accepted part of the economy and he fought it and it became illegal within 20 years.
It’s slavery. Slavery happened since the beginning of time too, people are always going to subjugate weaker people. People do awful things to each other, but just because it’s been happening for a long time doesn’t make it okay. Just because there are women who are always being sold doesn’t make it an acceptable thing to do with a human being.
Other sources:
The Protection Project: Johns Hopkins University
Trafficking in Persons Report: U.S. Department of State
—Photo isaacd / flickr
You might be interested in a kind of new
approach to human trafficking by Minnesota-
based retired NYC detective Jim Rothstein:
http://www.randomcollection.info/mat-flyer1.pdf
Jim is hoping his idea will expand to many other
cities. Please consider it seriously.
Eleanor White
Elliot Lake, ON
Canada
John D, I’m going out with someone who escaped. you shut your damn mouth. “how do we know they were forced?” You are filth for even suggesting that a 13 year old would find that appealing.
I am 25 years old and have been sexually abused for 10 years of my childhood. Just say it was daily frequent thing that happened. My mother was a heroin addict who is now dead, she died when I was 19. Eventually I got to go back to my grandmas care who,raised be from birth to three years of age until my addict mother took me from my only known home, lost custody of me for neglect and sent me to a foster . home my grand,other spent thousands of dollars fighting to get custody however I am an Indian… Read more »
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn !
that’s waaack .
People wonder “WHY”, Why do underage girls get all the media coverage, and why not boys. Probably for the same reason pretty , young white girls who go missing get all the attention. Probably the same reason that when there is a disaster, major mass killing etc, that women specifically are mentioned. i.e. “20 people were killed today in train derailment, including a number of women”. WHY, because women are considered way more valuable to society as a whole.
http://www.citypages.com/2011-11-02/news/lost-boys-new-research-demolishes-the-stereotype-of-the-underage-sex-worker-mdash-and-sparks-an-outbreak-of-denial-among-child-sex-trafficking-alarmists-nationwide/
Sex-trafficking stereotype demolished by new research
Alarmists nationwide in denial
This is another report, quite new, November 2011, which you might find to be useful about the situation of boys regarding human trafficking and sexual abuse.
I wonder why all reports are about girls as victim of sex trafficking.
http://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/ulr/article/view/484/352
THE CONSCIOUS NEGLECT OF MEN
AND BOYS IN THE WAR ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING
Men and especially underage boys are also the target of sex trafficking in surprisingly large number in USA and elsewhere, however the problem is underreported. Who cares about boys anyway?
Boy sex trafficking rings represent a major criminal enterprise in the United States, see link above.
Yohan, You are so right- most of the reports and statistics are about young girls. This is not right and it is not fair. Honestly, only recently have people even acknowledge that there was such a thing in America as “domestic sex trafficking”. Prostitution has historically been viewed as a “victimless crime” because people have not realized that not all of those girls are there by choice, and many are not old enough to consent to a choice such as that in the first place. The organization that I work for is one of the few in the country that… Read more »
Thank you for sharing this link Yohan. I have a changed view now. This type of media manipulation is unacceptable.
Thank you very much for your supportive comment for male victims. It is not easy to research, but it seems about 45 percent of underage victims of sexual abuse and trafficking otherwise are boys. It is not true that the ‘huge majority are girls’ as stated in this thread by the OP. I posted another link, with a fairly new report, and the result is about the same, there is a considerable number of male victims, some of them very young, and there is nothing provided for them… except jail. There are almost no programs available for shelters, education for… Read more »
Personally, I think it isn’t that boys caren’t cared about directly. Perhaps it is for the same psychological reason that horror movies depict women dying in gruesome ways more than men, or that women are shown being rendered helpless even in children’s movies far more than boys. Perhaps, boys are expected to act like men and defend themselves, and while it is mentally acceptable to watch girls being exploited and demeaned, it is not so acceptable to watch that same treated for boys. Perhaps, boys being in positions where they are rendered helpless isn’t ‘sexy’. It doesn’t titillate the senses… Read more »
As a sex addict in recovery for some years now, I am angry that there are so many who go out of their way to create “debate” around the truth of sex trafficking. I can’t tell you how many 12-step groups I’ve sat in, filled to the rafters with guys like me who used massage parlors and escort services in our city. The sad and horrible truth is part of what makes using them easy is precisely that the girls are so young and do not speak English. It helped me (and other guys who’ve shared this, too) to not… Read more »
In reply to Johnathan D: What proof do you have that the girls you saw were underage? That is, under the age of 18? What proof do you have that they were forced? If the girls came and went – how is that proof that they were being mistreated? And who was forcing them? You are just guessing. Were the girls you saw kicking screaming and crying while you were trying to have sex with them? So, you are admitting that you raped underage girls by force? You need to turn yourself into the police. What didn’t you do that?… Read more »
I appreciate your courage, and I wish you well in your continued recovery. Thank you for standing up for those who truly are unable to speak for themselves. Does it really matter how many women and children are being trafficked anually? I mean really? How many people abused and exploited does it take for some people to decide it is a problem? Is that how they determine whether or not to allow someone to throw money at the issue, by stats? People on the front lines have to be discredited so they can stick their head in the sand, or… Read more »
Sex trafficking is illegal and the penalties are very severe. It is very difficult to kidnap and force someone to be a forced prostitute sex slave, they would have to have 24 hour guards posted and be watched 365 days a year, 24 hours per day. Have the threat of violence if they refused, and have no one notice and complain to the authorities or police. They would need to hide from the general public yet still manage to see customers from the general public and not have the customers turn the traffickers in to the police. They would need… Read more »
So, after all of that, where are your sources? You claim that things have been proven false, but you don’t provide any sources? You make huge numerical assumptions, and yet….provide no sources? Provide no evidence? Did you even read the article? I mean, seriously, yours is by far the weakest most personally driven opinion-piece masquerading as intellectual thought that has been posted on here yet. You cite no facts of your own, and rant about how there are people who are trying to get the governments money? Really? Come on. I think we all deserve better than that. If you… Read more »
Wow! Jeff are you really this ignorant?
Actually the sex trafficking fear-mongers CONSISTENTLY fail to produce any solid peer-reviewed research. All the hoopla about the world cup in germany drawing in 50,000 sex trafficked women sent the law enforcement into overdrive. After 100’s of thousands of additional man hours of police and investigators, volunteers and others only 5 total cases were produced. Go upthread to read MANY such stories in which HUGE investigations only yield handfuls or goose eggs (zero) cases. I refuse to entertain other peoples fear-mongering any more. Produce some peer reviewed credible research or point to an instance where these huge police crackdowns didn’t… Read more »
The media will say that millions of people are kidnapped forced sex slave prostitutes without doing any real research on the topic. Only taking the word of special interest anti-prostitution groups which need to generate money in the form of huge government grants from taxpayers, and charities. These “non profit” group’s employees make huge salaries, therefore they need to lobby the government, and inflate and invent victims in order to get more money into their organizations. If you look into how many real kidnapped forced against their will sex slaves there are, and not just take the anti-prostitution groups word… Read more »
Wow. Drown the message and the story with words and statistics. Just don’t look at the emotional truth. If any of these “statisticians” had read the article they would have noted that the children caught in these traps have been seduced and manipulated into mistaking abuse for love, often because they came from families with problems. That they may deny they are being coerced or not report it does not mean that it isn’t coercion or damaging. When I was working in a shelter I saw a young mildly intellectually impaired girl fall for this. She believed before she met… Read more »
Sounds,
A drive for the truth is just that: an urgent request to get at the truth.
Nobody fears the truth except for liars.
So Jeff (or is John?) after looking over your website I realize you would probably deny the Trans-Atlantic slave trade too..
Steph, I am not Jeff. I don’t have a home page. Upthread I posted a link to a debunking of the 300k number of sex trafficked children in the usa. I can’t be sure to what web-page you are referring based on your remark. I am specifically responding to Sounds questioning WHY somebody would want accurate numbers of sex trafficked children (and criticize “cooked” numbers). A drive for honest numbers is not denial. It seems many on this sight want to deny that the problem of sex trafficked children in the usa is much smaller in terms of numbers than… Read more »
This is one case I found by a simple Google search:
http://www.fbi.gov/kansascity/press-releases/2009/kc040709.htm
Just one case, where they were actually caught and prosecuted. Just like drug dealers, or murders, or embezzlers, or other practiced criminals, how many actually get caught? How many are actually prosecuted?
Erika – It’s interesting to hear from people with real world experience, and who can tell it like it is. I was struck by you saying that you recognized that you are in essence no different to the children you reach out to. I’m so glad to hear that you have that attitude. So many have the view that they are superior and are acting to, as it were, lift people out of a hole. That can be so disrespectful and damaging, both in the short term and the long term. You say that you are interested in becoming a… Read more »
Nichole- Gosh… Thank you for sharing that on here. It must be very difficult, indeed, for you to read these arguments about statistics and figures when you know better than most the reality of the street. The piece of information that I generally don’t include when I speak to people about my human rights work is my own background. Before blowing out my knee. Truth is, I was a runaway, too. There was a lot going on in my house- and I was either kicked out or ran away frequently. I am now working on repairing the relationships within my… Read more »
To Erika: thanks for sharing so openly. One of the most amazing things about speaking with you was how enthusiastic and joyful you were about such a grim situation. I’ve tried to carry that forward in my own pursuits. To Anonymous re hijacking: Imagine a story as park and all the things that go in it: romantic walks, crime, wildlife, ball games, homeless people, rain, lawn mowing, working on laptops during lunch, loneliness, statues, fountains, public gatherings. Now imagine talking about that park with a group of people and one person insists on discussing only one of those aspects as… Read more »
LE : you bring up an excellent point actually. Well done. So we have this park and there are all kinds of things going on in the park, some good , some bad. The org that is tasked with providing funding to the park decides that getting rid of the wildlife is their #1 priority as it will enchance public safety (a laudable goal), as you have pointed out there are many things going on in the park that require attention. Would it matter if there were only 1 incident of a problem with wildlife per year and hundreds or… Read more »
Yes, I was comparing the two, in terms of morbidity. On average, is a child in America more likely to die of A) complications from obesity and heart disease or B) killed while a sex slave? I think A is the much, much more likely danger. Sorry, don’t have exact figures on that, but I’m very confident that the difference is huge. The first danger is not as interesting or as crusade-worthy or as unremittingly evil, but it is nonetheless the greater threat. It’s an incremental threat, so ubiquitous that we hardly notice, but still a threat nonetheless. My point… Read more »
You don’t make any sense…. You have such skewed logic:
More people are killed by cars than planes. So we should divert all attention to cars and not worry about plane safety. WTF?
That is basically your argument.
I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter if its one kid or a thousand. Molestation, sexual abuse, sexual slavery is wrong and must be stopped. Period.
I’m trying to understand your angle…why is it that you are against efforts to shield kids from this type of harm?
His angle as you put it is priorities. With infinte resources both money and emotional we could eradicate all the problems effecting children (in theory) but we don’t have infinite, therefore we should be going after the problem that (in no particular order) a) Are most likely to be solved b) Will help the most people (children) This is what he is saying. I know that sex trafficking is a high priority right now because it is in the media alot and it garners much sympathy. The numbers matter, not because sex trafficking is less (or more) damaging to children,… Read more »
In response to Erin and others: With all due respect, in a society with finite resources, it makes a huge difference if it’s one girl or one million girls. I completely agree that the numbers have nothing to do with whether slavery is evil or not. It’s evil, whether it’s on a large scale or small scale. Realistically, however, at some point society needs to prioritize threats to our children according to how *likely* those threats are. Not just how horrible those threats are, but also how likely they are to happen. We don’t have infinite public resources, we don’t… Read more »
To Anonymous:
Wait, you’re comparing an overweight child with a raped and trafficked child?
And this: “There must be thousands getting coerced by a family member into performing sex with no payment at all.”
Really, being paid for rape is an advantage?
Anonymous, it’s interesting that you mention what our society has the ability to do or not do with it’s resources and how we need to “realistically” prioritize threats when it comes specifically to children. I think we are all intelligent enough to understand that society doesn’t have infinite resources. I’m just baffled at you using this specific article as a sounding board for issues you logistically really have with Government more then anything else. This article is meant to bring awareness about a realistic problem, it’s not a platform for your personal political crusade. But if you want to get… Read more »
Wonderful Interview that shows insight into an issue that too often goes undiscussed. I think people are too scared to really address the ugly realities of what is happening concerning the sex industry and children. It is not a pretty or comfortable topic, it’s down right skin crawling. People do not want to think of toddlers getting raped. Or 11 year old American girls being used by 9 men at one time even though it happens. People don’t want to think about the men, who are honestly the ones that are most often using and peddling the system, that could… Read more »
” The second feeling is one of being overwhelmed with the magnitude of children that need help. And the last feeling is total helplessness. What can I do to help? There are too many kids in that world and what am I suppose to do about it? Do I even want to “go there” to help? Truth is, I don’t. So I suspect that that’s how alot of people feel as well.” It’s very emotive stuff – and no one can disagree with that. It’s emotive when Figures such as 300000 American children being trafficked or at risk. The figures… Read more »
To Erin: Thank you for your insightful comment
To Mediahound: We have repeatedly heard what you have say and it’s pretty clear that you have an agenda here, and one that is not in the interests of trafficked children. Don’t twist my article to promote your agenda, which gets sketchier with every post. Your posts have exceeded hijacking and are bordering unhealthy.
I’m still having trouble getting a handle on the definition of “hijacking” used in your recent message.
Perhaps you could briefly model the appropriate behavior so I can see where he/she has gone wrong. If MediaHound disagreed with you and wanted to explain why he disagreed with you without hijacking, what would that look like?
I’m looking to engage in some discussion of the merits of various arguments, but I do not want to engage in hijacking if I can help it.
LE: “To Mediahound: We have repeatedly heard what you have say and it’s pretty clear that you have an agenda here, and one that is not in the interests of trafficked children. Don’t twist my article to promote your agenda, which gets sketchier with every post. Your posts have exceeded hijacking and are bordering unhealthy.” LE I know you were responding to MH, but I can’t help throwing my 2 cents in. I don’t understand why you find it so threatening for critics to ask for valid data that proves your assumptions. While each and every story of a sex-trafficked… Read more »
Here is the story of daddy justice getting assaulted for trying to break through the bad advocacy research being presented at VAWA reauthorization hearings.
ht tp://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/when-feminists-attack/
LE: I never mentioned legalization of prostitution To your questions I will answer (tongue in cheek) 1) yes 2) yes 3) yes 4) yes AND I eat at Mcdonalds, shoot my 5y/o with heroine, listen to country music, have a gun rack, am a racist homophobe, lynch black people, and have 4 big gas-guzzling SUV’s and have the carbon footprint of 500 average people. Oh, and I have a dog-fighting kennel. Wow, you must REALLY fear the truth. You’re just throwing anything against the wall to see what sticks aren’t you? If I question your cooked numbers then I must… Read more »
John D, your refusal to answer these pertinent questions nullifies your shrill cries about accountability. You obviously seem to have a vested interest in this subject and have a real lack of transparency there.
This article is not about the numbers of children in trafficking. You can find those articles elsewhere. This article is about how children are coerced into trafficking, why they can’t escape and how they become so lost in our expansive country.
What do you hope to prove by asking these questions of the commenters, LE? They’re asking for your sources, not your CORI.
Wow, you accused MediaHound of having an agenda. that is rich, really rich.
I guess it is true, some people just never let facts get in the way of a good story.
Erin says: “At the end of the day, I don’t care if this happens to 1 girl or 1 million children.” It may not matter to each individual child. I will agree that every single instance of it happening is awful and SHOULDN’T happen, and if possible should be stopped. But considering how much more we have on our plate (like homelessness for one), it isn’t reasonable to just “roll along” and to ignore the shoddy research methods and treat a 1000 or 2500 child problem like it is a 300k child problem. What if I told you that credible… Read more »
You haven’t provided anything that is a credible peer-reviewed study that is not a problem. Why? People aren’t funding these studies. People are not interested in dealing with squicky problems that make them depressed or sad. Doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist. You have not proven that this situation is a 10 kid, 10 million dollar scenario. Not in the least. Look at this video. It’s made by Brian Bates, video vigilante. He saw a problem in his community and did what he could to stop it. He took a video tape and goes to the south side of Oklahoma… Read more »
Eisenmenger: …it’s estimated that 293,000 children in the USA could be trafficked, with the vast majority being girls.. THE CONSCIOUS NEGLECT OF MEN AND BOYS IN THE WAR ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING http://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/ulr/article/view/484/352 It is NOT true that the VAST majority are girls… Please study the link above, however trafficking of boys is underreported. Some text of this study: The traditional narrative obscures the plight of male victims, especially male children. For instance, the sex trafficking of young boys feeds the high demand for child pornography in the United States, more than half of which features boys rather than girls.27 In… Read more »
Let me explain where my skepticism is coming from. Perhaps I am being a little knee-jerk here, but you see I feel like I’ve been burned before by some very similar crusades against exploitation. I have a long memory when it comes to worthy causes. When I was a young, impressionable undergraduate in the early 1990’s, when my critical reasoning skills were woefully underdeveloped, I was very moved by a workshop organized by K. McKinnon showing the horrible ways that pornography exploits women. I was convinced that there really were thousands of women being kidnapped, raped, and murdered every year… Read more »
To Anonymous: Please allow me to redirect you to JW’s comment: Should these trafficked minors be referred to as “sex slaves.”
and Part 2) If they are slaves, are they entitled to some kind of restitution?
Anon, you’re a liar. You did not take a course or workshop with K.MacKinnon…Why? Because there is no K. MacKinnon… at least not one that has national recognition as a leader in this field. There is a CATHERINE MacKinnon. And if you were actually in the course you would’ve known that as her name is actually pretty famous… but you don’t you just heard it repeated on some Abuser Lobby website and conveniently as Anon you repeat it here incorrectly… not providing any proof you attended any such workshop but rather repeat MRA urban legend about what her studies revealed.… Read more »
To Anonymous: People hijack threads all the time – lol, it happens in every subject and leaves writers clawing at their monitor. Something in a story strikes a reader’s fancy and they strongly argue a slightly off-topic point, then the next commentator responds to that, taking it completely off topic usually with controversial or false information and then all the commenters flock off in that direction, over the hills and far away. In a way, this thread has been “hijacked” by the back and forth about statistical accuracy. I know readers and when they see long comments filled with numbers… Read more »
“To Anonymous: People hijack threads all the time – lol, it happens in every subject and leaves writers clawing at their monitor. Something in a story strikes a reader’s fancy and they strongly argue a slightly off-topic point, then the next commentator responds to that, taking it completely off topic usually with controversial or false information and then all the commenters flock off in that direction, over the hills and far away.” My goodness, that’s a depressing vision of the reading public. We’re easily sidetracked, enticed by sparkly things, and then follow lemming-like behind the most charismatic Pied Piper. (Sorry,… Read more »
To Anonymous: It’s just the nature of comments. People are passionate about their interests. In this case, statistical discussion disproportionately overshadowed the thread. It’s not off-track per se, but other issues here dwarf data collection.
Nicole You make some harts felt points – but also there are some assumptions in there about other people, their intentions and even their knowledge. Personally – I have been on the streets like Erika Clark working directly with those kids. I know how brave she is and how hard it is. I also know just how vital accurate information is, and how mythology about those kids can get in the way. Recently it has been published all over the world that there is a massive increase in Child prostitution and trafficking in the USA – the figures are bogus!… Read more »
Mediahound, I am still slightly reeling over what appears to be a condescending attitude towards me, so I may not be as polite as usual. You claim to have been in the trenches and are aware that there are children in the sex trade, yet later you refer to it as a “fictional” problem. Which is it, fictional or not? Where is your proof of a cabal of NPOs abusing government funds, and short changing actual victims? Where are the actual legal charges, and legal ramifications from misusing government funds? NPOs open their books when they ask for government funds,… Read more »
LE, thanks for writing this article. Firstly, this issue touches me personally, I was a teen runaway and although I did not engage in prostitution, I did engage in survival sex on the streets more than once. I counted among my friends many prostitutes, and I was friends with girls who started working as young as 11 in order to survive. I know many of the issues that exist with trying to track down & count street kids are doubly so for underage prostitution. Also I know how many girls I knew who worked when underage, so I tend to… Read more »
The only way this will ever stop is if men get a conscience and stop paying for it ,also important here is to realize the danger of porn.
What an incredibly helpful comment. According to Jackie- men, in general, lack a consience. You certainly live up to the “superstar” moniker.
Hi. As the author of “Child Sex Trafficking in the USA: Up Close and Personal,” I appreciate all the experts contributing their data on this issue. It’s very important and you are special people. However, I selected Good Men Project as a venue because I wanted this story to reach a wide variety of people and to hear their response, however simple or contrary. I had a vast selection of formal sites on which I could have published. If we could, I’d really like to hear the impressions of readers, not experts. I am not an expert in this area.… Read more »
LE- I understand your call for more impressions….this topic is dear to my heart and your article still managed to shock me in parts of it- that we humans do this to one another is incomprehensible to me.
Thanks for being brave enough to submit it here; as you can see, it hits some raw nerves. Would love to read more of your work on GMP!
I really hope your organization doesn’t use that terrible “Hands That Heal” curriculum as shown in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTncdkjtl4s
My dear FW I have heard of the issue, but not seen the content until now. What was highlighted and illustrated was disturbing – but pausing the video and looking at all content was even more disturbing. It takes quite a bit to shock me, but that video succeeded. The last section on role play is more than disturbing – and in fact If I was ever to personally see it being used I would intervene without reservation and stop it! It is more than abusive – it actually meets the international definition of torture! Heaven save us all from… Read more »
I read as much as I can about this topic and I have to say this was incredibly helpful and informative.
I would encourage in your next article to not refer to sex slaves as prostitutes, they are slaves; the pimps get their money not them.
You know what I thought the same thing!