The federal Department of Health and Human Services is stepping up efforts to help victims of sex trafficking — particularly children — to get help rebuilding their lives, including finding food, shelter, health care and employment.
According to the department’s National Human Trafficking Resource Center, “Sex trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act is under the age of 18 years.”
The State Department has reported that 600,000 to 800,000 victims are trafficked across international borders each year and that more than half of the victims worldwide are children. And while most people are aware of the importation of young women into the United States from Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and rural parts of Asia to be sold into prostitution, fewer know that FBI statistics show that in the U.S., 55 percent of people under the age of 18 arrested on prostitution-related charges are black children.
Under the federal law Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, any minor under the age 18 that is forced into prostitution is considered a victim of human trafficking, a modern day form of slavery.
“Human trafficking is a growing problem in the U.S. and the world, particularly when it comes to victims of sex trafficking. Because black children make up more than half of all prostitution-related arrests involving minors in the U.S., this is a serious situation that warrants both attention and action,” Tara Wall, spokesperson for the HHS Administration for Children & Families, said in a statement. “The Rescue and Restore effort by the Bush Administration is working to combat this evil by identifying as many trafficked people as possible and offering help after these victims are freed from the bonds of this modern-day form of slavery.”