One Child is Too Many

This is an ugly topic that no one wants to discuss.  It is about Human Trafficking as it pertains to children and teens.  It is estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 children are at risk of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking each year. (Estes &Weiner, 2001)  This can include runaways, children who come into this country through coyotes (not the animal, but smugglers) or just kidnapped to be forced into this life.  

Let me tell you about an 18 year old girl, Rebecca Bender.  She grew up in a great home, did well in school and even graduate from high school a year early.  But at 16 years old got pregnant and decided to keep her beautiful daughter.  It was then that she met a man who treated her with kindness.  After 6 months, she had him meet her parents.  She really liked him and felt connected to him, primarily because of the attention that he showed her little daughter.  He said he was in a band and they wanted to go to Las Vegas where they felt that they could get more recognition and gigs.  As soon as they got there, they pulled up to an escort service.  He told Rebecca that he had spent a lot of money to get her down to Las Vegas and that she would need to earn it back.  There was an apartment paid with first and last months rent, a fridge with food, and now she needed to make money through prostituting herself.  In Las Vegas, 90% of prostitute women and girls are controlled by pimps aka traffickers.  If she didn't bring home 1500 dollars a night, he threatened to leave her child on the street.  She faced an ugly world all around her.  She was fed the lies that trapped her.  There is a happy ending to this story, but not every trafficking story does.  After six years of abuse, arrests, and fear, she was able to escape her trafficker and make it back to her family.  Today she stands as an advocate for those caught in the world of human trafficking. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHcoEY6gJJ0&t=6s)

Unfortunately, hers is not the only story to be told.  According to the website, Polaris Project, in one year, they were able to documents 11,500 stories of human trafficking.  The numbers are not precise because getting accurate data can be difficult.

In doing research on this topic, I found legislation titled “Trafficking Victims Protection Act”.  I was surprised that it took until the year 2000 to have laws passed to protect trafficked victims.  It also showed which federal agencies are involved and how they are working to combat these terrible crimes. These agencies are Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Services.  Without Polaris, this important data wouldn’t have been available to different organizations or the government.

There are also many organizations to involved in helping to stop this "modern day slave trade".  One of those people is Mr. Tim Ballard.  He created an organization called O.U.R. (Operation Underground Railroad).  He and his team have not only recovered children and teens that are being trafficked but understood the importance of what comes next in their lives- recovery.  In an interview with Tim Ballard on YouTube with Lewis Howes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHQHP7cCg0c&t=3517s), he included stories of his successful and unsuccessful operations.  He started this operation about 20 years ago.  In that time, he discovered that we in the United States are the #1 consumers of Child Exploitations like, prostitution or pornography, even videos online of children being abused.

I want to touch on a subject about abuse of children that is actually shocking and disturbing.  In the interview with Ballard he talks about the dark web and how our children can be bought and sold, even trapped into this trade.  But I want to address something that most might not consider dangerous or even suspect, and that is the world of family vloggers.  YouTube has become a place where stay at home moms can make money from companies as they advertise with their families online.  It's innocent and harmless, they think, until you look and see their demographics. When you see that videos you may be posting, innocently for sure, of your daughters in bathing suits or doing the splits, go look to see who is watching.  One young girl whose parents are having her be part of their vlog, has over 50% of her videos viewed by men in the age range of 25-44 year old demographic.  That's disturbing.  Are we so naïve that we don't recognize that we are becoming the traffickers?  Maybe that is a bit to harsh, but these children can't give their consent to having videos of them online or who will be watching it. 

We have a way to get involved.  We can become educated.  We can stand up for the victims.  One child is too many to be involved in this life.  

Ways to get involved:

O.U.R. website

Polaris Project website

rebeccabender.org