Posted on 01/15/2008 6:55:08 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o
Fourteen-year-old Cara and her 15-year-old cousin, Stacy (not their real names) walked out of their homes in Toledo, Ohio on a rainy May day in 2005 to get milkshakes. A few blocks away, a couple driving a Lincoln Continental pulled alongside the cousins and asked if they wanted a lift. Believing the man’s claim to be a schoolmate’s father, the girls stepped into the car — and entered a nightmare world of sexual slavery.
The couple drove the girls to a house and locked them in. As their families frantically searched for them, the teens were sold over and over again at area hotels. Ten days into their captivity the girls were taken to a truck stop near Ann Arbor, Michigan, where police officers, acting on a prostitution tip, discovered Stacy and one of her captors in a truck. Because of her youth, police took Stacy into custody, and later rescued Cara.
We’re used to hearing about sexual slavery in other countries, like Thailand and India. But these were homegrown, corn-fed, All-American girls being raped by All-American men. There’s no need to fly overseas on sex tourism junkets anymore: Girls and boys as young as 12 are available right here in the USA — the more modest estimates running at around 100,000 of them. Some, like Cara and Stacy, are kidnapped into the brutal world of sex slavery. Others — runaways and girls exploited by older “boyfriends” — are seduced into it. Some victims unknowingly encounter pimps online, and when they meet these new “friends” at malls and parks, they’re drugged and then kidnapped. Pimps often move their human cargo across the country, making it difficult for girls to contact their families.
Former congresswoman Linda Smith, founder of Shared Hope International, an organization that rescues and assists women and girls forced into prostitution worldwide, says a pimp can easily make over $600,000 a year selling underage girls, making the peddling of human flesh more profitable than selling drugs. Living conditions are about what you’d expect for slaves: Girls are chained up in basements, or locked into closets. Those who try to escape are beaten, raped, and tortured.
Who buys children? Truckers, who seek out “Lot Lizards,” as they’re called, at truck stops. Executives who visit Atlanta or Las Vegas for conventions. Political activists who travel to Washington for meetings.
Shared Hope has created a DVD (the video contains some graphic content) outlining the extent of domestic minor sex trafficking. Visit their website and watch “Jessica” describe how she fell into prostitution at the age of 12, selling herself for a place to sleep at night. Or listen in on a conversations between a pimp and a man he believes wants to purchase a young girl — a man who is secretly recording their negotiations:
Pimp: “What type of girl do you want? Black, white, or what?
Buyer: “How many young ones do you have?”
Pimp: “Two black, two white.”
Buyer: “And how old are they?”
Pimp: “They’re between 14 and seventeen.”
Buyer: “What color is the 14-year-old?”
Pimp: “She’s white.”
Buyer: “Okay, white is good.”
Pimp: “If you pay the price, you can get what you want.”
Tragically, many people know children are being trafficked, but do nothing about it. When Linda Smith spent a few nights on the streets of Las Vegas last year researching the extent of child sex trafficking, she saw men openly handing out cards featuring young girls in sexual poses and a telephone number to call if they wanted a child delivered to their hotel. She saw “Little girls draped over men who were old enough to be their grandfathers at 4 A.M.” — clearly trafficking victims. “Everyone from cops to hotel concierges, to truck stop security guards, to those who deliver room service, to taxi drivers who know they’re delivering little girls to their abusers know what’s going on” but turn a blind eye, Smith told me grimly. “We call it the culture of tolerance.”
It’s partly a problem of perception. Society tends to view prostitutes, even child prostitutes, as whores, Smith says. “The reason good people can ignore these girls is because in their minds, she’s not a rape victim, or a lost child, but a ‘bad girl.’” As for those who exploit them — the attitude is typically “boys will be boys;” cops often don’t arrest buyers because they don’t want to get them into trouble.
What drives the sexual enslavement of America’s children? Pornography. Child porn has increased exponentially in both volume and violence since digital cameras and the Internet have made it easy to create and distribute it, according to Shared Hope. “Eighty-five percent of those arrested for sex crimes say ‘I started with porn,” Smith notes.
The sex industry “needs a new generation of buyers,” which is why so much Internet porn is directed at young boys: It’s intended to create more product demand. (Think the “Joe Camel” campaign, with addiction to children, not cigarettes, the intended goal.) The U.S. Senate last Friday (January 11) “Human Trafficking Awareness Day” with the goal of educating Americans regarding the extent of this human crisis and the need to find creative ways to stop the buying and selling of children locally.
To help Americans do this, Shared Hope has created The Defenders USA, a network of men, now more than 1,500-strong, who sign a pledge committing themselves to abstaining from porn and protecting their families and communities against sexual exploitation. Beginning on Father’s Day, 2007, in an effort to humanize the victims, the Defenders ran public service announcements and hit the nation’s truck stops in a campaign called “She Has A Name — And It Is Not Lot Lizard,” asking truck drivers to join them in protecting young women against sexual predators. They tack up posters, pass out law enforcement phone numbers and call police themselves if they see someone who appears to be a trafficking victim. Shared Hope also works with dozens of human trafficking task forces across the country, partnering with the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Their goal: To combat sex trafficking of domestic children through more aggressive arrest and prosecution of pimps and the child abusers with whom they do business.
The DOJ has created materials to train first responders — law enforcement officers, child protective services, 911 operators — to recognize trafficking victims, Smith says. Girls who escape sexual bondage desperately need medical care, long-term counseling, and a place to live. To help meet this need, Shared Hope provides grants to shelters and youth outreach organizations specifically for trafficking victims.
Sadly, official efforts will never be enough to prevent the buying and selling of our children. This is a war in which millions of ordinary Americans “need to be willing to get their hands bloodied in battle,” Smith maintains. We all need to learn how to recognize a trafficked child, and be willing to contact authorities if we encounter one.
Cara and Stacy are recovering from their ordeal. But for hundreds of thousands of other all-American girls caught in the web of sexual slavery, the nightmare continues. “They are in every city,” Smith says. “They are being sold at truck stops, strip joints, massage parlors and often out of homes, marketed online or on the streets. But they are our little girls. And they need our help.”
— Anne Morse is a senior writer at BreakPoint, a division of Prison Fellowship. She contributes to “The Point,” a blog devoted to the discussion of culture, politics and religion.
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National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDYwODc0Y2QzYWI2ZmMyNjNlMGMzZTNkMDY3ZDkxZGE=
Lay a copy of this article on her bed. Don't say a thing. See what she says.
Amen - my 18-year-old college student knows that I’ll be on the couch waiting up for her no matter what time she gets in. It’s both accountability and comfort - she knows I’ll be there, and she knows I’ll know if she’s not there and that she won’t have to wait till morning to be missed. Dads, you’re the first line of defense in this area.
Colonel, USAFR
This makes me really sick.
An Ann Arbor truck stop. If that is the one I am thinking of, it was a prostitution hot spot back in the 1970s when I still lived in A2.
Friends back then kept assuring me that prostitution was a victimless crime and I was uncool because I opposed legalizing it.
I am still uncool and stories like this one are why.
According to the census, there’s about 20 million kids in the 10-14 age group.
100,000 would be about a half a percent of that, or one child slave for every 200 free ones.
You are correct, it’s wise to check facts a bit.
As much as I hate prostitution, I’d rather see it legalized and the women get full protection under the law.
Oh yea, and I’m uber-uncool in that if you’re found to be a pimp or a john for child prostitutes, instant execution.
I’m cranky that way.
Sorry, porn’s porn and it does nobody any good. And no, I’m not goody two-shoes. I’m a former military prosecutor and defense counsel and have seen too much of what porn leads to, both for the offender and the offended.
Colonel, USAFR
Nice catch on the census numbers, that's exactly the kind of analysis I was thinking of.
The fact that pornography plays a role by fueling these evil desires and eventually leads some to act on those desires is just an obvious conclusion. It has nothing to do with trucks other than you are going to find truckers at truck stops. To pretend blaming pornography is like blaming trucks is a disgusting response.
There is a lot of talk on this forum of securing our borders which must be done. But our interstate highway is not safe. It is a lifeline of all kinds of criminal commerce other than that of trafficking illegal aliens. For any policeman to make a stop of a suspicious vehicle on one of our interstates is a very very dangerous undertaking even in so called flyover country. With terroism such a priority at our aiports, criminals of all sorts make their way on the interstates.
Have you considered that mom or dad may in fact themselves have been the user on their kid's PC looking at porn, thinking that their spouse won't look there if they're checking on their spouse?
I agree with one of the previous posters. Public Shaming of these perverts would go a long way to correcting the issue.
And, perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but I can't imagine people (huge numbers of people, judging by the article)seeing children openly selling themselves and doing nothing about it.
The way to attack a problem as hideous as this is through hard facts (cited) and legal action. Not through hyperbolic rants like this article. All that does is have good people say "No way it's that bad. I'll make sure my kids don't do this!" and then they move on with their lives.
I'd also ask what these "researchers" did with their research... Take pictures? Call the police? Write down license plates? A quick note to the house of the perp "Who was that you were with last night?" would make for a lot of inconvenient questions from wives. Certainly the truckers would be *very* easy to track - if they're not independents, their companies would be very, very interested in their shenanigans. And the companies employing the independents would be interested, too.
I'm sorry, this article just does not pass the sniff test, IMHO. It's too bad - this is a hideous crime. It deserves real scrutiny and articles like this don't help.
Indeed, the majority of truck drivers are good decent people. I was one!
Criminals are a minority in practically any classification except prison inmates. That said, the minority of truck drivers that are criminals is a larger minority than in many other jobs.
“Nice catch on the census numbers”
Thanks, the internet is Power to the People.
I bet it would have taken Dan Rather’s 1980 staff a week to do what I clicked up!
“which has a GPS tracker for parents to use to keep track of the kids.”
No, it keeps track of where the phone is. The phone could be in a movie multiplex at the mall, while the kid is an hour away and still moving.
The legality of many things which "do nobody any good" is part of living in a free country.
I really was unsure as to the sarcasm. While I was a truck driver I did encounter discrimination and prejudice that caused me to appreciate why discrimination and prejudice can be both a bad thing and understandable.
“Lot Lizards”...nothing new about this except someone writes a news article.
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