Children Are Not Prostitutes

Young boys and girls in every city on the globe today are forced to serve as sex slaves. Sex traffickers target twelve- to seventeen-year-old children as their choice candidates. The johns who pay regular visits to brothels prefer adolescents above any other age group. Looked at from the cold perspective of a slaveholder, adolescents also have a longer shelf life. Any older and they start to lose their youthful appeal. Any younger and they may draw the attention of law enforcement authorities.
Because sex trafficking masks itself as prostitution, the general public does not feel outraged. The children are perceived to be criminals or sexual deviants or at best victims of their environment: desperate for survival, the kids “choose” to sell their bodies for profit.

The real criminals hide in the shadows. An illicit network of traffickers, pimps, recruiters, brothel owners, and johns preys on vulnerable kids and forces them into a life of sexual commerce. Once the inner workings of that criminal network are exposed, common sense prevails. Of course a child would not volunteer for the repeated trauma of ten (or more) grown men penetrating their bodies every evening. We have a word for exploiting minors that way: rape.

It should be noted that the same mechanisms of financial bondage and violent intimidation that enslave children are practiced on females of all ages. Adult “prostitutes” too can recount shocking testimonies of pimps locking them in closets, flogging them with coat hangers, and forcing them to service a staggering number of clients. The pimps quite explicitly refer to these women as “my property” and will attack anyone who acts to compromise their control.

Coercing children into the sex trade entails much less ambiguity. The actual process of enslavement varies from place to place; the most influential independent variable is the strength of law enforcement in a particular region. Research across five continents uncovers a disturbingly common pattern in child sex trafficking, regardless of whether international crime networks are involved or the operation runs on a regional level with ad hoc players. The process of enslavement involves five predictable elements:

Recruitment- Traffickers target children most commonly from poor communities in the third world that lack social power, at times with the consent of the victims parents.
Extraction- Traffickers remove recruits from their home community and shift them to a destination where they are unlikely to get support from law enforcement bodies or the general citizenry.
Control- Slaveholders seek control over every aspect of the child’s life so that escape becomes unthinkable.
Violence- Slaveholders exercise violence as a means to reinforce their control and ensure compliance.
Exploitation- Slaveholders show slight regard for the physical or emotional health of the child in their pursuit of financial gain.

I hope this article except from Not For Sale website will enlighten the readers on how Sex Slavery in Children exists.  Please help us spread awareness by forwarding this blog.  We aim to save one life a day --help us attain our goal.

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