In a number of depressed urban areas, there is a alarming practice taking place (actually, it's been happening all over the world for thousands of years, but it's escalating rapidly), where young girls and women are either coerced or forced into prostitution.
How do you "force" a young woman into prostition? Quite simply, you abduct a young girl of 11, 12, or 13 right off the streets, drag her back to some horrible location, have 20 or 30 guys repeatedly gang rape her for a few days, a little torture, some mental screwing around (as if the repeated rape and torture weren't enough to mess up a young girl's mind), and then give her a few days to heal.
Let her know what she has to do to survive, buy her some trashy clothes, and put her on the curb.
The sex-slave trade is alive and well here in America. Girls that try to escape are subjected to horrible beatings, murder, being drugged up into compliance, you name it. They are often sold to pimps in other cities and removed from anyone or anything that is familiar. For brutalized young women, fear becomes their overwhelming motivator.
When family members try to find these girls, often times the law treats the girls as criminals, not victims.
It happens to girls from every kind of background. Look at poor Elizabeth Smart. Beautiful,intelligent, from a loving, stable home. After several months of suffering under the monsters who kidnapped her, she was too afraid to even confirm her identity - to scream the truth when given the opportunity. Even though she was not "turned out", the same "survival mode" mentality kicks in.
And when they get AIDS, it is the "bonus" gift for the creeps that visit them, which then gets passed out into the general population.
A truly sad twist is that if they do get arrested, they are so demoralized and brainwashed that they think whoring is all they can do. They've missed school, friends, their innocence is gone, burned out of them. They don't see themselves as worthy of being around regular people, and often sink back into "the life."
It's easy to point to AIDS victims and presume that they must have done something terrible to get this disease.
Have at least a little bit of heart, folks. No everyone suffering with it finds themselves in that situation by choice.
The young girls who are finally abandoned when they are too sick to sell their bodies deserve compassion, not condemnation. They've already been through enough hell to last several lifetimes.
Sorry for the soapbox; but protecting our young women is something I'm passionate about.
“Sorry for the soapbox; but protecting our young women is something I’m passionate about.”
You ranted, but you didn’t show any numbers, I doubt that American kidnapping and sex slavery of 11, 12 and 13 year old girls is what drives AIDs.
You sound very knowledgeable about the subject and God bless you for trying to help. How big is this problem in the U.S.? I could understand it being a huge problem in, say Thailand or Mexico, but it doesn’t get any attention in the U.S.