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Child prostitution - in a City near you

 

It may come as surprise to learn that people don't have to travel to Thailand, Jamaica or Mexico City to encounter child prostitution; it's right here in America.

Most large U.S. cities house populations of child prostitutes, kept there under the control of pimps to satisfy increasing demand for their sexual services. Groups of these children travel to venues - the Super Bowl for example - as child prostitution road-shows, in response to demand for them.

These kids come from neighborhoods like yours - runaways, children and young teens kidnapped from the street (from outside the mall or movie theatre) or grabbed while on vacation, chatted up on-line, answering an ad for a job - who are rarely, if ever, seen again.

Befriended, romanced, beaten and abused by their pimp they learn to rely on him to survive. And survival is what this sexual slavery is all about, as the pimps have the power of life, death or trade over them. They coerce the child (from 8 to 17 years old) to work whenever and wherever they - the pimp - please.

And not just in America; the demand for sex with children is filled in cities all over the world; in Europe, Canada, Australia, Asia, India  - just about anywhere you can think of. What we may have thought was a horror endured in far-off places, survives and thrives right down the street from where we live. What's more disturbing is how easy it is that these lost children could be our own. Sometimes they are.


Look at these statistics

  • 300,000 children in the U.S. are at risk every year for commercial sexual exploitation. - U.S. Department of Justice

  • An estimated 14,500 to 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States each year. The number of U.S. citizens trafficked within the country is even higher, with an estimated 200,000 American children at risk for trafficking into the sex industry. – U.S. Department of Justice Report to Congress from Attorney General John Ashcroft on U.S. Government Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons

  • Investigators and researchers estimate the average predator in the U.S. can make more than $200,000 a year off one young girl. – NBC Report by Teri Williams

  • 600,000 – 800,000 people are bought and sold across international borders each year; 50% are children, most are female. The majority of these victims are forced into the commercial sex trade. – U.S. Department of State, 2004, Trafficking in Persons Report, Washington, D.C.

  • An estimated 2.5 million children, the majority of them girls, are sexually exploited in the multibillion dollar commercial sex industry – UNICEF


Child Trafficking information Links

Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking
Prostituted Children in the United States: Identifying and Responding to America’s Trafficked Youth (Video)

Shared Hope International’s National Report on Child Sexual Slavery in America
- Download pdf at bottom of page

Shared Hope International - Leading a worldwide effort to eradicate child sexual slavery. Prevent, Rescue, Restore

2009 Trafficking in Persons Report (175 countries reviewed) - U.S. Dept of State - The 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report on 175 nations is the most comprehensive worldwide report on the efforts of governments to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons. (pdf or html)

ECPAT - International child advocacy group focusing on the problems of child prostitution, child pornography and trafficking of children for sex ECPAT has Special Consultative Status with the Economic & Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC)

Child Trafficking
Digital Library pertaining to international child trafficking: accumulated knowledge, skills and experience on a global platform. International resource since 1999

Children for sale - MSNBC

Human Trafficking.org - A web resource for combating human trafficking
 

Terminology (CSEC Terminology)

 

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