Sex trafficking takes place in Milwaukee and Mumbai. Girls, women, and even boys are kidnapped, coerced or seduced into prostitution. Grown men rape them. Drug them. And discard them.
Sex trafficking is a multi-billion dollar global enterprise involving millions of people. Most victims are females of color – Asian, African, African-American and Latina. According to federal law, human trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person to perform labor or a commercial sex act through force, fraud or coercion.
Any commercial sex act performed by a person under age 18 is considered human trafficking, regardless of whether force, fraud or coercion is involved.
Human traffickers move like traffickers of guns and drugs. Human beings are packed in vans and container cars, moved overland or shipped by sea. Runaway children are prime targets.
Child sex tourism is big business. People travel worldwide to engage in sexual acts with minors, according to ECPAT, a global network working for the elimination of child prostitution, child pornography and trafficking of children.
Virgins are valuable. Traffickers offer $200, more than three years income in Asian villages. Virgins are also prized by traffickers in America. Men in Seattle and South Africa pay substantially more to rape an innocent girl and boy.
Both women and men train children in “the sex trade.” Young people, lost and confused, feeling betrayed by society, cling to the abuser as a new family. In Philadelphia, men find girls running from abusive homes and play on their youthful insecurities. In Poland, young women follow men with promises of employment. Too late they discover a fate of prostitution or domestic work and rape.
Prosecutors now understand that child prostitutes are victims of statutory rape. Juvenile detention facilities are beginning to recognize trafficked children. Schools and hospitals are becoming aware of the signs of a sexually abused or trafficked child.
Trafficked children are fearful. They rarely have personal identification. Bruised, tired and sexually suggestive, they may be malnourished and frequently absent. They speak little of home or family. Brainwashed, most might refuse assistance.
Traffickers are criminals. The F.B.I. and local police are targeting traffickers. Sex traffickers can be charged with kidnapping, rape, and assault, with enhanced sentences for trafficking. Every State, except Wyoming, and 116 countries make trafficking a crime.
History marks this year as the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Slavery, then, involved the rape of African girls. Profit, then, drove men to strip legions of human beings of their humanity. Slavery, then, was a global enterprise. Yet, American slavery was defeated. Today, abolitionists are needed to defeat sex slavery.
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is associate professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College.
