May 7, 2011 - Nicholas Kristof, a reporter for the New York Times, wrote an article last week about the reality of child sex slavery in the United Sates. Thanks to him, a wave of awareness about human trafficking hit and more and more people are learning that this exists in our country, even in our neighborhoods.
When most people think of human trafficking, they immediately think of trafficking occurring in third world countries, far away poor countries that are more susceptible to these horrific crimes.
Rarely, if ever, are people thinking of the children in our own country being trafficked. American girls are being forced into sex and labor slavery at an alarming rate, and there is little public awareness that this is happening
Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times crusades against female trafficking worldwide. He once bought two girls from a foreign brothel for $150 and $200 to set them free. He and his wife have written a new book, Half the Sky, about oppression of women. Stunningly, Kristof told a college assembly that sex trafficking of girls now is 10 times larger than the slave trade was before the Civil War.
Last week, Kristof wrote that America's worst offense isn't "Mexican or Korean or Russian women smuggled into brothels in the United States.... The biggest trafficking problem involves homegrown American runaways." He outlined this scenario:
A 13-year-old girl feuds with her single mother, and the mom's boyfriend makes passes at her. The child "runs away to the bus station, where the only person on the lookout for girls like her is a pimp. He buys her dinner, gives her a place to stay, and the next thing she knows, she is earning him $1,500 a day."
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