Today, more than twelve million people worldwide are enslaved.[1] An estimated two million children are bought and sold in the global commercial sex trade.[2] The sex slavery industry has become an increasingly important revenue source for organized crime because each young girl can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for her pimp.
While this is a problem in many countries, many Americans don’t realize that it happens here at home as well. Thousands of children are forced into domestic sex slavery each year and that the average age of entry is 13 years old.[3] The majority of American victims of commercial sexual exploitation tend to be runaway youth who live on the street, often who have left homes where they were abused or abandoned. Pimps prey on their vulnerability. These girls are our neighbors, our friends, our sisters and our daughters.
Current Research
Shared Hope International: The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America’s Prostituted Children
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Women’s Funding Network: Craigslist Ads Featuring Adolescent Females Yield Three Times the Transactions per Ad: Pilot study reveals it’s not the number of ads, it’s the shocking number of responses to Craigslist postings
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U.S. Department of State: Trafficking in Person’s Report, 2010
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Donna M. Hughes, University of Rhode Island: The Demand for Victims of Sex Trafficking
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Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation: Deconstructing the Demand for Prostitution
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Polaris Project: Common Myths about Human Trafficking in the US
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Footnotes:
[1] International Labor Organization http://www.freetheslaves.net/
[2] UNICEF http://www.worldofchildren.org/index.php/honorees/honoree-journals-from-the-field/165-a-white-paoer-on-the-child-sex-trade-by-harry-leibowitz