The issue of child sex trafficking is becoming more pointed as new research comes out about the vastness of the problem. A heart-wrenching interview with a survivor of child trafficking came out during testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee last week:
When I was 12 years old, a guy I thought was just a “dope [cool] boy” kept following me in his car when I walked to school…eventually I got in the car with him. For a while we were girlfriend and boyfriend; we would go everywhere together. It didn’t take long before I experienced the real treatment— being beaten, stomped on, manipulated and sold all day every day.
Shared Hope International, a non-profit committed to globally preventing and eradicating sex trafficking and slavery, testified to the Committee about the problem of child trafficking in the U.S.
Linda Smith, Founder and President, represented the organization and focused on the current issues in domestic child trafficking response.
JJIE.org is providing a full transcript of her testimony, which you can read here.
I am grateful that organizations like Shared Hope International have put forth the effort needed to rescue some of the victims of child sex trafficking. The heart wrenching stories of the victims compel us to ask the questions: How do we stop this? How do we prevent this? The answers are not simple. The essential problem is that sex trafficking of children is not the criminal act of individuals working independently. Rather, it is an organized crime activity. And criminal organizations, we know from experience, sustain themselves by seeking to compromise law enforcement while intimidating and bullying the communities they infect with their venom. Such organizattions can’t be stopped by merely publishing their atrocities. They require a systematic community response that won’t tolerate anything less than their complete eradication.