Sex Trafficking - Part 1

This afternoon three women from Grace Church, Chapel Hill www.gracelife.com left to travel to India to visit a ministry called Freedom Firm. Freedom Firm www.freedom.firm.in works with local police and governments to free underage girls from sex trafficking in India and also has a home for girls freed from trafficking. These young girls have had their childhood stolen and their innocence stripped away from them in the vilest manner. Some of them are so severely emotional damaged that they will never be able to function in normal society. In India, as well as many other countries, they can not go back to their families, sometimes because it was their families that sold them in the first place.  Their chances of being married and having a family are slim.

The stories the girls tell and the things that have been documented about their lives in trafficking are astounding. Many were 11 or 12 when they entered trafficking. In some cases they are forced to service multiple clients in a night's time. They are treated like property and if they become sick, pregnant or infected with STDs or AIDS they are kicked out and abandoned on the streets.

It is hard to hear about children in India being abused like this, but at least it is happening far away and is someone else's fault and another government's failure to protect the innocent, right?Well, in the US last year about 200,000 women and girls and boys were trafficked in the sex trade. Some statistics suggest that 80% of runaways are picked up by traffickers in bus stations or along the streets within 48 hours of running away. Women from other countries may be trafficked here because they are desperate to find work or sometimes to fill an appetite for a certain race or type of woman, others trafficked are the daughters of average American families who were enticed through the Internet or relationships at school or local hangouts. Many are minors. Like the girls in India some become so emotionally damaged that they can not function in society when they are discarded by their traffickers. Drug and alcohol abuse are almost a given as they seek to self medicate the pain they feel. 

Of course there would be no trafficking if there was no demand for the product. In sex trafficking the girls, women and sometimes boys are abused by both the trafficker who controls them and the man who buys them and demands their "services". 

Shared Hope International www.sharedhope.org works with victims of sex trafficking internationally and here in the states. They have started a campaign to educate the demand side of sex trafficking by creating a educational campaign and having men sign a defenders pledge http://thedefendersusa.org/.