I first heard about sex trafficking from a speaker at my high school who had gone to Southeast Asia and co-founded an organization called Love146. (There’s a very interested story behind the name that I recommend reading!) Love146 was created to abolish sex trafficking and exploitation all across the world and has become very successful. I didn’t know anything more than the term before, but he piqued my curiosity and inspired my activism, and I have studied sex trafficking ever since: writing a feature narrative script about the victims of sex trafficking and, currently, working on a short film I created based off of that feature. (If you would like to check out the progress of the film, please visit our Facebook page!)
Photo by Sara Slattery
Sex trafficking is an issue that occurs all over the world: some places are more common than others, but it even happens here in the United States. Southeast Asia has a huge ongoing issue with sex trafficking, specifically counties like Cambodia and Thailand, because it is common for law enforcement to turn their heads on this issue. The U.S. is obviously stricter, but that doesn’t stop trafficking from occurring! The U.S.’s stronger laws simply force the traffickers to be more creative in their business. And yes, the traffickers look at capturing and selling children as business and only business.
Love146’s website shares many real-life stories of victims. One story entails a girl named Robin who was 7 years old when she contracted an STD after her mother pimped her out to make $50 per customer.
A large percentage of American runaway children become prostitutes, many of whom are tricked and forced into this lifestyle where they have no choice in the matter. Traffickers in the U.S. use all sorts of tricks to capture children and lead them into a life of sexual trafficking and abuse. In one method, male or female traffickers will pretend to be from modeling and acting agencies in order to find children they can coerce into trusting them. Some men trick young girls into falling in love with them, telling them everything a young girl could want from a man. They spoil them and pretend to care for them until the girl puts all her trust into him. Traffickers know how to look for children who are naive, have low self-esteem, or have bad family situations, and they use these weaknesses against them; however, this does not exclude upper- and middle-class children, as traffickers will utilize any opportunity. Some children are not coerced, but abducted from their neighborhoods and homes. And some are even sold by their own family members. Traffickers use decoys like massage parlors, bars, and homes to create a cover for what is actually going on behind closed doors. But sex traffic isn’t just a domestic market: not only are children taken from their neighborhoods in America, but women and children are also shipped into and out of the United States.
The Internet has been a huge source for traffickers to find and/or sell women and children. When I was in college, a petition was circulating to end one of Craigslist’s sections devoted to classifieds: traffickers had found a way to use the “adult services” section to sell women and children for sexual purposes. The section has since been shut down entirely.
What does sex trafficking entail exactly? You’ve probably seen and read news stories about children and women who are kidnapped and forced to perform sexual acts on their capturers. Other common situations force the victims to have sex with various clients—up to dozens of customers daily. The victims do not usually see any of the money their pimp makes using them. On the website of Mark Ridley-Thomas, an LA County Supervisor, it states that these women are forced to make between $500 and $1000 a night and forced to perform sexual acts to men as much as three times their age.
Even though sex trafficking seems far from our own lives and cities, it is actually happening right in our backyard. It’s reported that, each year, the number of victims has increased in Los Angeles since 2010: California Attorney General Kamala Harris stated that “there were 304 victims from April through June of [2012],” and continued that it’s “a figure that is triple the 100 victims during the same period of 2011.” This number reflects all of human trafficking, which includes labor trafficking along with sex trafficking.
Recently, a man was arrested in Long Beach, accused by U.S. Attorney spokesman Thom Morzek of “forcing the 17-year-old girl to work 12 hours a day to perform sex acts with about 50, and possibly more, men, in just the course of a couple of weeks, and forcing her to give every single dollar that she earned to him.”
If you pass by Sixth Street and Ceres Avenue in downtown LA, you will notice a mural painted on an auto repair shop. The painting shows the face of a young woman along with a quote saying “I am a survivor of sex trafficking.” The woman depicted is a sex trafficking survivor who was forced into prostitution at the age of 11 and lived this life for over ten years. She recently was able to escape and now she is a mentor.
If you are interested in learning more about sex trafficking and learning about how you can take a stand against it, there are many great organizations to check out like Polaris Project, Not for Sale, Shared Hope International, and Somaly Mam Foundation. There are so many ways you can get involved in the fight against human trafficking, from raising money to just telling a friend about this issue. One of the most important ways to help end this ongoing issue is awareness. The more people who know about this issue, the more people who can help bring this issue to and end. There can be a good ending to all of these children’s stories.