Human Trafficking
What is human trafficking?
We invite you to watch this short video recently featured on NBC: How girls are recruited- Human Trafficking
Human trafficking is modern day slavery and is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world. It is the recruitment, transportation, or taking of persons by means of threat, force, fraud, or deception for the purpose of exploiting them. Victims of trafficking are forced or coerced into labor or sexual exploitation. Labor trafficking ranges from domestic servitude and small-scale labor operations to large-scale operations such as farms, sweatshops, and major multinational corporations. Sex trafficking is one of the most profitable forms of trafficking and involves any form of sexual exploitation in prostitution, pornography, and the commercial sexual abuse of children.
Who are the victims of domestic sex trafficking?
An estimated 300,000 American children are at risk for trafficking into the sex industry annually. Traffickers coerce women and children to enter the commercial sex industry through the use of a variety of recruitment and control mechanisms in strip clubs, prostitution,and brothels. Domestic sex traffickers (“pimps”) target vulnerable young girls, such as runaway, homeless, and foster-care children. The pimp seduces a new recruit with the lure of love, protection, wealth, designer clothes, fancy cars, and exclusive nightclubs. Sex traffickers use a variety of methods to “condition” their victims including starvation, confinement, physical abuse, rape, threats of violence to the victims and the victims’ families, forced drug use and the threat of shaming their victims by revealing their activities to their family and their families’ friends after recruitment.
What is the average age of entry into prostitution?
The average age of entry into prostitution is 12-14 years old in the U.S., according to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. One reason that most girls end up working in prostitution is because many were victims of incest. Incest and other forms of abuse often drive a child to run away from home and become vulnerable to the slick tactics of pimps and other predators. One victim described the transition into prostitution, “I felt like, after having been abused at home, I had been trained for this all of my life.”
How are we involved?
Psalm 82:3 says, ” Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.” Rose of Sharon is taking this command seriously by inviting victims of prositution, as well as other life-controlling issues, to live in the Dream Center during Friday night outreach. If you would like more information about this ministry or would like to be trained in outreach, click here for Rose of Sharon page. We also network with other great organizations who are involved in education and advocacy against human trafficking.
ALSO see our testimony page to find out more updates about our work here and in India.
Statistics
Contrary to a common assumption, human trafficking is not just a problem in other countries. Cases of human trafficking have been reported in all 50 states, Washington D.C., and some U.S. territories. Victims of human trafficking can be children or adults, U.S. citizens or foreign nationals, male or female.
According to U.S. government estimates, thousands of men, women, and children are trafficked to the United States for the purposes of sexual and labor exploitation. An unknown number of U.S. citizens and legal residents are trafficked within the country primarily for sexual servitude and, to a lesser extent, forced labor. (via U.S. Department of Education.)
