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
About LE Eisenmenger
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 for it. You will be very surprised.
Where are all the forced kidnapped prostitute sex slaves?
I would like to meet the millions of sex slaves and see for myself if they were in fact kidnapped, and forced against their will. This hurts any real victims because it labels all sex workers as victims.Everything I heard about this problem was Americans complaining about it, but I never heard from the so-called victims themselves complaining about it. Why is that? Many of the self appointed experts complaining about this have never even met or seen a real forced against their will victim.
These anti-prostitution groups lobby the government in a big way, getting Politicians to truly believe their lies.
This is an attempt to over inflate an issue in order to get more government money to these organizations. As a tax payer, voter, and resident I don’t want the government to mislead me. I would like to see a news organization do a full report on the lies, myths and exaggerated numbers being told about sex trafficking slaves. The articles about the super bowl sex slaves, has been proved wrong many times, but news organizations still report about it, as if it were fact.While there are some women who may be true victims. This is a small rare group of people.
What hard evidence does the police have that these women were forced slaves? Were all the women that the police saw in fact slaves? Did the police prove without a doubt due to hard concrete evidence that the women were victims of being slaves and forced against their will? Did they account for all the benefits they would receive if they lied? I find it very hard to believe that most women in this business are forced against their will to do it. It would just be too difficult.
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 this man that she was unlovable and worthless. For a brief time she was on top of the world. Someone loved her! Then as things evolved she kept trying to fit the events into a scenario in which she was still loved “and important.” She was devastated. If she felt worthless before, what was she now? She did not want to see.
It was heartbreaking. She was a vulnerable sweet little girl.
But it is well known that pedophiles don’t even “like” their victims and typically blame the child.
One wonders what the up close and personal experience is of some of these posters who are drowning the topic in words and numbers. Didn’t someone say he had “been in the trenches”? one wonders doing what.
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 the shoddy research suggests.
We should embrace the truth no matter where it leads us.
I am not well enough researched on trans-atlantic slave trade to state anything about it. (Hint: I admit my failings).
This isn’t the first time this has happened.
What happened to the oil shortage of the 70′s that lead to production of all those chevettes and pintos? What happened to all those latchkey kids? What happened to all those crack babies? Where are all those fraternity rapes? What happened to all these tens of thousands of women dying from snuff film producers? What happened to all those swine flu cases, SARS, Bird flu? There is always some hyped up epidemic of some kind floating around.
Considering all the exhaustive false scares it would take a saint not to be VERY skeptical. If it annoys some on here that we want accurate numbers (rather than shoddy advocacy research), then you will just have to be annoyed.
People’s attempts to throw whatever labels upon us for a drive for truth aren’t sticking. Using those tactics says a lot more about those individuals then they do about the critics of this article.
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?
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 to provide them with medical care, food, shelter, and have all their basic needs met. They would need to have the sex slaves put on a fake front that they enjoyed what they were doing, act flirtatious and do their job well. They would have to deal with the authorities looking for the missing women, and hide any money they may make, since it comes from illegal activity. They must do all of this while constantly trying to prevent the sex slaves from escaping and reporting them to the police. They would need to prevent the general public from reporting them into the police. This is extremely difficult to do, which makes this activity rare.
The numbers of sex trafficking sex slaves:
There is a lot of controversy over the numbers of adult woman who are forced sex slaves. The real factual answer is that no one knows. There is hard evidence that the sex slavery/sex trafficking issue continues to report false information and is greatly exaggerated by politicians, the media, and aid groups, feminist and religious organizations that receive funds from the government, The estimate of adult women who become new sex slaves ranges anywhere from 40 million a year to 5,000 per year all of which appear to be much too high. They have no evidence to back up these numbers, and no one questions them about it. Their sources have no sources, and are made up numbers. In fact if some of these numbers are to believed which have either not changed or have been increased each year for the past twenty years, all woman on earth would currently be sex slaves. Yet, very few real forced against their will sex slaves have been found.
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 disagree because you feel like it, fine, just say that. If you disagree because you have facts – that you can demonstrate – then say that. Otherwise, the rhetoric is just lame.
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 produce only 1% or less of expected cases expected based on fear-mongering advocates and you’ll shut me up.
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 ‘connect’ with the reality that these are girls far from home, alone and pretty obviously not there by choice since they’re illegal here and way too young.. It’s obvious in looking back over my behaviors (and it’s hard to do) that the disconnect was made all the easier by the fact that the girls can’t talk to you-
Every month there were new girls. When I’d ask where “Sue” was, the Asian front-desk person would smile and say, ‘She went back to her country’. Right, wonder how she did that? With that Passport she doesn’t have access to? Today, I know this is how they keep the revolving door going of ‘new girls’ all the while minimizing the risk that one of us would rescue her….just cycle them in and out of other ‘dens’.
It’s sick and disheartening to read others try and debunk these ugly realities of sex trafficking. Wish the authors would have talked to the hundreds of us sex addicts who meet every week– we could verify the reality of the revolving-door of what sure seemed like underage Asian girls …and there are hundreds of these places in my city. Hundreds.
Thanks for writing this important article– Keep up the efforts on behalf of all the girls out there.
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? You need to go to jail Johnathan.
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 excuse their own behavior that is ‘isn’t that bad,what are those bleeding hearts complaining about?’ or ‘those people really chose to have sex with me for cash, so that’s ok, right?’ Is using other people purely as a resource to get your base animal drives pumping ever a moral choice?
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 also reaches out to boys. The boy track is actually a much more enjoyable and less stressful experience for us on the outreach team. They don’t have pimps watching them and ready to beat them, so we are able to talk to them and find out how they are doing. And of course, if we see a boy who we know is underage, we call our friends at the local PD who specialize in child exploitation. We partner with them to get the boy some help.
But there is a long way to go with the boys especially. Almost no one realizes that it is an issue and that those boys are victims. It is a messy area because of differing views about homosexuality and the like. Because of various laws and licenses, even my boss who is the founder of my organization and LOVES those boys is unable to put minor boys and girls in the same group home.
Also, there are organizations around the country that are getting wise to the fact that exploitation of children knows no gender, and that we need to provide equal services for the boys. Unfortunately this is a long and drawn out process- particularly when you have to educate every single person you speak with that it is, in fact, a problem. And then you get what you might have read above in the comments about this article- people who in their quest for truth fixate on arguing about the numbers rather than building homes and programs for the boys. Accurate numbers are extremely difficult to attain unless you are willing to infiltrate- and very few organizations/people are willing to do that. Even still, my organization has numbers about are area of the country, but that isn’t necessarily transferable to other cities.
So take heart. There are people who are aware of this and are working to protect and fight for all children. People do care about these boys. But there is a long road ahead.
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 boys, almost all and everything is for girls only.
We MRAs think, this must be changed, but to say that is not really politically correct.
Please read the report. Thank you! Yohan
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 the way thoughts of girls being sexually molested does. In this society, boys aren’t readily portrayed as sexual ‘objects’ and so, when they are in reality treated that way, their plight is much more invisible. Perhaps it smacks too closely to homosexuality. Perhaps it is even more hidden because those who would pursue this sort of sexual abuse are even more concealed than those who abuse women.
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.
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.
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn !
that’s waaack .
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 by blood and my mother had the chocktaw nation who flew attorneys to fight this custody battle my grandma did not get custody instead my mother wanted me to go to foster care until she could clean up her act. I only had 1 hour visitation a month with my grandparents. My mother visited me The week before she had regained custody of me two years later. One what a messed up thing to do. 2 she took me down on her spiral to becoming a heroin addict, prostitute, diabetic, always on her death bed. She got involved with my first child molester her boyfriend. Who abused me daily I spoke of this abuse to my mother several times only to get the drowsy reply from my mother listen to your daddy, you can’t always have your wayMy mother was so high I can’t even say she heard my pleadings for it to stop. Eventually I thought it was what happened all the time to everyone and just like sex with your wife was not discussed openly. Eventually my mother and her boyfriend owed their suppliers money who traded their dept for me I can recall being drugged at 7 or 8 more than one time and men touching me in able to move and waking up the next day in agony from the cramps. I am not a prostitute nor do I think that all prostitutes are forced or their because they have no other outlets however young girls are conditioned, just like molesting, and so on. I can see how any child not just other people’s children get trafficked but how uncles cousins grandparents can open the gates knowingly and sometimes not aware that they are setting these girls and boys up for prostitution. I could just imagine all of my situations I have been in, how much worse it may have been. Ism sure at my hopeless points of abuse when Turing to my mom wouldn’t help she did not care, if a older man said hey come with me at 8 your mom does not care , you are being used, and I will take care of you and one day let you go back to your grandmas when we find her. I could have easily ended up there. Thankfully at eleven my grandmother regained custody of me again because I got in trouble and the police showed up when they took me back to my moms the found her lying naked on the couch unconscious despite the fact they were there for 15 mins watching me run around the house trying to wake her up with cold water thrown on her getting her a cup of sugar and water, she always asked for that when she OD something to do with being diabetic. I was coached to nurse my mother instead of 911 when she took to much or had a hard comedown at the age of 7. That was not the end on my sexual abuse my grandmother remarried just before she won custody of me to a man who was a professional gospel singer who molested me to now at this point It was not of feeling like its ok but sadly my grandmother had a brain Tumor that made her lose her memory and he used that to get away with his perverted acts. However it was not near a severe abuse as with my mother and only lewd acts. I am not on a corner today have never been. I do not sleep around have had three sex partners by choice and know first had how tedious a young Curropt mind is. “ABUSE” it’s the key to proof abuse is everywhere from physical emotional mentally brainwashing. It’s everywhere and what is worst is America is worse due to the fact it’s so hidden from public opinion, is I better to have a pedophile amongst family’s and people of all classes. Or do you think it worse to hear of these tragic events that happen to women in other country’s the whole idea is its everywhere and it’s,happening for the same reasons it is there, poor parents not educated enough to see the dangers of whom ever is the one to sell or abuse their children and other who just don’t give a damn, selfish older brothers, uncles cousins. They are all here. What makes you think any traumatized girl wants to admit she has been abused to critical people ready to fault and criticisise their abuse. You need to really wake up. Its everywhere, I don’t think you have a clue if you guys want to see fact go to, a welfare office you’ll see stinky broke uneducated people listen to their conversations amongst each other observe who is,with them. They men and children both. Wealthy people have no idea what people poor people are dealing with most are or have been abused, in some way shape or form and. Not to say that wealthy children do not run away with a pimp, but lot as often as girls in my situation who weren’t strong enough to have faith that there is a time when all things will be as It should. Just an abused girls point of view
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.
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