a grand and prosperous business. The laws here in the U.S. are not putting a halt to the child trafficking crime.
Instead of slowing it down it is growing even more rapidly day by day. Child trafficking has many forms. Young children are lured into prostitution, and child pornography is the largest business involving children in the US. It is considered child pornography and child prostitution when the minor is involved in sexually explicit conduct. Forced labor, slavery, and servitude go in the same category. All three actions have to do with forcing the victim to do actions they are not familiar with or simply not comfortable performing. The removal of organs, international adoption, trafficking for marriage, recruiting children as child soldiers, or recruiting for cults mostly happens in foreign countries, not so much in the US. Although it has not been seen as much in the US, it can be possible. There have been cases in San Diego, California, where bodies of young women with missing organs. Children are targeted into this industry because they are extremely vulnerable and innocent. Children do not understand the circumstances of accepting amazing offers from strangers who just deceit them in the end. According to Bergman “More …show more content…
than 10,000 men, women, and children in the United States are being forced to work as prostitutes, agricultural and sweatshop laborers, or restaurant and domestic workers” (Bergman). When children are finally in this business, they do not talk to anyone most of the time about their situation. Their situation being that they were lied to and now they are forced to do so-called jobs that they do not want to keep doing for the rest of their lives. According to Bergman “Often immigrants too terrified to reveal their plight - to beatings, threats, and other forms of abuse, both physical and psychological” (Bergman). The majority of the victims who come into the US to just begin their journey are immigrants. These immigrants come mostly from Europe, Africa, and Asia. These people come from very poor backgrounds and are uneducated. When someone offers them a better education, better food and clothing and a way to make money they easily accept. Child Trafficking began a very long time ago. People became more aware of the trafficking of children in the 1700’s. Mainly in factories, and mines in Great Britain. Children were forced to work in these environments for long hours and for little pay. As one little boy recalls: "They [boys of eight years] used to get 3d [d is the abbreviation for pence] or 4d a day. Now a man's wages is divided into eight eighths; at eleven, two eighths; at thirteen, three eighths; at fifteen, four eighths; at twenty, a man's wagesÐ About 15s [shillings]" (“qtd in Wiki”). These environments were very dangerous for children. Many died or were severely injured. Factory owners would say that instead of giving orphans money, they would give them clothing, food, and shelter. Those were all lies. All children were treated very poorly. They were not given new clothes or a fresh piece of bread they were given cents for all the work they would do for a week. Children as young as six would work for 12- 14 hours with only one minimal break. Things began to get a little better after the Factory Act was passed by the Parliament. There was more justice for the children in the 1700’s when it came to working long hours, but then again one little law isn’t going to solve the abuse of the child. Child Prostitution began showing up more in the late 1970’s. The big issue triggering this catastrophe was the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act. “The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) of 1974 provided the major source of federal funding to improve states' juvenile justice systems. The JJDPA was developed with a broad consensus that children should not have contact with adults in jails and other institutional settings and that status offenders should not be placed in secure detention. Under the JJDPA and its subsequent re-authorizations, in order to receive federal funds, states are required to maintain these core protections for children” (“Blocks”). This act did not work for the good, but more for the worse. After the act was passed, many children began living on the streets and taking care of themselves. A way for them to obtain food was through prostitution. “Children interviewed cited the following reasons for leaving home: family violence, parental alcoholism, abuse, poverty, and personal reasons” (Le Roux). Many of the children in the 70’s did indeed have these problems happening in their lives at the time and they chose to begin living the hard way just to get away. People think that in the child trafficking business the women are affected the most. That is not completely true. Both genders are affected the same and destroyed in the same way. These victims, both boys and girls, are forced to do unfamiliar and strange acts. For example, the female is favored the most in the prostitution ring than the male is. Why is that so? Well, usually when someone is finding a prostitute it is usually always a man looking for a young woman. When boys are victimized into child trafficking they are usually used for labor, marriage, or to become a soldier. According to Pope John Paul II "The disturbing tendency to treat prostitution as a business or industry not only contributes to the trade in human beings, but is itself evidence of a growing tendency to detach freedom from the moral law and to reduce the rich mystery of human sexuality to a mere commodity" (Pope John Paul II). Most traffickers are experts in manipulative tactics such as deception, intimidation, isolation, threat as well as using physical force. There is also a tactic that trafficker’s use that is called “debt bondage.” In this tactic, the victim is always in debt and can never pay their way out of the market. There are many cases where one victim has not paid their debt and that debt passes on to their son or daughter and then to their grandson or granddaughter and so on. Officially, the whole family is stuck. It is an absolute awful trick that traffickers do. "What you can see, time and time again, is that the predators will adapt their means to whatever the young people are doing -- whether it's malls, whether it's ski slopes, whether it's beaches, Predators ... are going to do everything in their power to try to convince young girls, young boys, to come with them and enter this particular lifestyle” (qtd in “Wiki”). It is true traffickers will do anything to get the girl or the boy they desire to have.
The business of child trafficking involves an enormous amount of people. There are millions and billions of people. People of all different races. These people come from across the ocean most of the time. A lot of people means a lot of money is being made. Child trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the entire world. For trafficking people mostly women and children it estimates to making $5 billion and $9 billion. The annual market estimates to making up to $42.5 billion. In the child trafficking business, traffickers view humans as objects. Traffickers view children as objects that they can easily buy and retrieve, and the cycle goes on. A trafficker easily can get ten young girls from a place filled with poverty. When those girls are not good looking anymore, too old or just too used, the trafficker can easily go to another place and get double the supply of children and at a lower price. According to Anabel P. Cassady “We’re talking about money here. Millions of dollars and these people don’t think about these women as human beings. They think of them as dollars and cents” (Cassady). More than 27 million people are enslaved by traffickers. These traffickers obtain so many by telling the victims that they are going to have a better job a better life in the US, but when the victims arrive there is a change of plans. Katya an immigrant from Russia tells us her story. “Katya and her friend are two of the estimated 17,000 young women and girls annually who are forced to work in the sex industry in the U.S. by organized criminals” (Kahng). Katya, a Russian girl, was a victim along with one of her friends. She thought she was one of the foreign exchange students that were going to have a summer job here in the US. When she arrived with her friend at the airport, two Russian men awaited Katya and her friend and told them that they would begin their job right away. To their shock, their job was a twelve hour shift stripping for local Detroit club called CHEETAH. Katya and her friend did this for a year. These men just told them they owe money. They began working and gave them everything they made each night. Just by forcing both Katya and her friend to strip at a club each night and make about a thousand a night Katya’s traffickers would get a great deal of money. Just by obtaining two young beautiful girls promising them a decent job Katya and her friend were unfortunately trapped. Katya’s story is only one out of many victims in the US. Victims whose voices have not been heard yet.
There are ways to identify victims of trafficking. There is a great probability that in the streets we drive through or the mall we shop at or simply close to where we live there is a victim of trafficking. “We are talking about child trafficking, and there are cases in all 50 states. According to US Government estimates, thousands of children are trafficked for the purposes of sexual and labor exploitation every year” (Turner). The most obvious ways to notice if someone is being trafficked is whether in school there is a student who has many unexplained absences, runs away from home frequently, has bruises or other physical injuries, withdrawal such as depression or fear, or are malnourished and dressed inappropriately. The signs for sex-related trafficking are if the person begins to dress differently such as wearing more expensive clothing, has a boyfriend who is ten plus years, and is very promiscuous. “Due to their vulnerability and gullibility, children are the primary targets of many sex traffickers. There is also a great deal of demand for young victims” (Greene). There has to be a way to put a halt to all this nonsense Innocent children as young as six years of age should not have to go through this. We Americans have to take part more seriously in stopping this now. The current laws in the United States that supposedly are helping to stop the issue of child trafficking have not been very successful. According to Clinton “The U.S. Government (USG) in 2008 continued to advance the goal of eradicating human trafficking in the United States. This coordinated effort includes several federal agencies and approximately $23 million in FY 2008 for domestic programs to boost anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts, identify and protect victims of trafficking, and raise awareness of trafficking as a means of preventing new incidents” (Clinton). Although all of these programs and laws have been signed and passed, the US Central Intelligence Agency still estimates that about 50,000 people are still being passed into the US and part of those people inhabited in the US as trafficking victims. “The United States is a destination country for thousands of men, women, and children trafficked largely from Mexico and East Asia, as well as countries in South Asia, Central America, Africa, and Europe, for the purposes of sexual and labor exploitation” (Clinton). There are so many individuals involved in this crime that it is difficult for a small amount of officials in America that dedicate there career to stop the trafficking. An official might stop a trafficker in Texas for example, but on the other side of America there are hundreds of other traffickers and victims. So many individuals have tried new tactics and brand new projects to stop child trafficking. The main reason why stopping this successful business is so difficult is because there are many people involved. In order to stop it we people who are not involved in this crime need to be more involved we need, to become a huge community. Traffickers will begin to feel surrounded and enclosed. The largest agency outside of the government in the US that is against child trafficking is UNICEF. UNICEF builds a protective environment for children. According to UNICEF “1,000 to 1,500 Guatemalan babies and children are trafficked each year for adoption by couples in North America and Europe” (“Unite”). Laws are being made by both the Government and programs like UNICEF help the government with ideas on what other laws should be made. Trafficking is still occurring after all the attempts. The US Government is involved as well as The President of The United States. The President is a very busy man and he has many other priorities that he looks at way before looking at the Child Trafficking priority. Trafficking is said to be around number fifty on the priority list for the President. It takes a lot of time for the President to barely accomplish priority one. It seems impossible for him to get or even look at priority fifty. Surprisingly, there have been many Child trafficking cases in California. There have been several in East Oakland. Children involved in prostitution rings have been identified and rescued by police officers in the Oakland area. There are girls as young as ten beginning to work on the streets as prostitutes. According to Dunlap “In one of the most comprehensive counts to date, the Oakland Police Department identified 293 teens younger than 18 being prostituted by at least 155 pimps over the year-and-a-half period that ended in May 2003” (Dunlap). Oakland has many young prostitutes, but the other city here in California that is considered one of the largest commercial centers for sex trafficking is San Francisco. “San Francisco's liberal attitude toward sex, the city's history of arresting prostitutes instead of pimps, and its large immigrant population have made it one of the top American cities for international sex traffickers to do business undetected” (May). Many young women go through airport customs in LA and San Francisco using fake passports or tourist visas that their traffickers make for them. America is the top third destination for sex traffickers. Once the victim arrives to the United States their journey begins, usually in the California cities of LA or San Francisco. Many police officers and other individuals involved with the government question on why all of these children are on the streets. “They found many of the children involved in prostitution are chronic runaways or fleeing sexual, mental and physical abuse at home” (Dunlap). Adolescents are the ones that mostly begin working on the streets. Teens are top targets in trafficking since they still act immature. Traffickers simply lie to them, promising a way to make easy money. Teens accept and then are trapped in a prostitution ring. “Children from poor and rural areas are more likely than other children to be abandoned, institutionalized, and to drop out of school, later to be found on the streets” (“Unicef”). UNICEF wants to stop this rapid growth of children on the streets. When a child is on the street desperate they are more likely to get initialized in child trafficking. The experiences of actual victims that went through the drastic and in humanizing crime of child trafficking have been experiences that have scarred these victims for life.
When interviewed by a reporter or simply just a person that is interested in the topic of trafficking, the victims break down in tears and sobs. After watching a victim break down just by asking how their experience was you can tell right away that it was horrific. According to May "It makes me sick to my stomach. Girls are being forced to come to this country. Their families back home are threatened, and they are being raped repeatedly, over and over" (May). Traffickers usually fly the new recruited women into Mexico or Canada. After landing in Mexico victims drive or begin walking to California through desert paths in Arizona and Texas. After landing in Canada victims go through Indian reservations where the US Border Patrol is not present. According to May “It's not like the movies where you open a trunk and you interview them and they tell you everything, they aren't going to tell you they're victimized because they aren't -- yet" (May). Victims still do not know that at the end of the journey they are not going to get that job as a model or a hostess. Instead they are forced to become a dancer at a strip club, sold into a brothel, or begin working in an Asian massage parlor in San Francisco, forced to have sex to make money for their
traffickers. The future does not look so promising. The history of America has always had a form of child trafficking. Slavery being on the top list. The most effective actions that the US can take without and improving halt to child trafficking would be to considerably slow trafficking down by assigning more government officials to child trafficking matters. Right now, the US does not have enough officials who only focus on the illegal trafficking of human beings. US government officials are busy addressing other crimes such as murders, rapes, and robberies. Another essential action that the US can do is to cooperate more with other countries. America, being the super power of the world, should tell other countries to make one major law on child trafficking. If that major law becomes a reality it will become easier to handle the issue of trafficking. The US as well as other countries will be more controlling with their people when it comes to immigration, and airlines. This law will become international.