Stop the exploitation of women and children now!

Events and situations that previously happened only in third world countries are now happening in the United States of America. The trafficking of young women and children that is prevalent in Asian and European countries is now increasing in the US. Why? Global governments are just now beginning to take action in the last ten years to curb the tide of the exploitation of human beings for bonded labor and sex.

Sex trafficking is modern day slavery- to say the least. These slaves produce at least 5 to 7 billion dollars annually. ( New UN Trafficking Protocol, 2002) Trafficking in persons is ranked right up there next to arms and drug trafficking. Human beings have an additional advantage as they can be used over and over again and sold over and over again, increasing the profits of traffickers. For example, In Indian brothels one girl is basically sold to 20- 40 men a day! At any time those same girls can be brought to the United States and sold as a maid or nanny in an American home, or even sold to a US brothel for far more money than she could be sold for in Asia.

Today there are over 12 million women and children in bonded labor, ten million of them in involuntary sex servitude. Traffickers, both men and women, operate through trickery and kidnapping, by promising extremely poor parents and relatives of children an opportunity to work as a nanny or housemaid in a large city in Asia, giving them $200 US, or less, in advance. This is the only money they will receive although they are promised funds monthly. Sadly, this is the last time the parents will see their daughters as they are taken across country borders, never to return.

We've seen villages in the Himalayan mountains where almost every house has a new roof or a black and white television, because of money bought from selling the children or wives to traffickers. The parents and relatives are unaware that their children are taken directly to brothels and tortured until they submit to sex work. Many of these girls are as young as nine years old and some are even as young as three or four years of age! The traffickers sell them to brothel owners and they work ten or fifteen years to pay off a debt of an unknown amount. They are forced to work until they contract STDs, such as HIV/AIDS and die if the brothel owners don’t kill them first. This spring we read in a South Asian newspaper of a young woman in India who brothel owners had tied to a railroad track to be run over by a train because she had contracted AIDS. Fortunately she was rescued just in time.

The traffickers are criminals but they are not prosecuted to the full extent of the law in many countries because they are very evil and dangerous people and their own local governments protect them. Why shouldn’t they ? In some countries, even the police are some of the main customers of the brothels. Government leaders in South Asian countries rape their twelve and thirteen year old housemaids and when they become pregnant they are threatened with death and thrown out to have the baby alone without any medical care. Many of these babies are born blind and with multiple handicaps because of the lack of medical care during pregnancy or at the time of birth to one so young.. Relatives use their nieces and nephews for sex to make extra money. A young girl was being used again and again, forced to have sex with many men by her aunt and uncle. One day a customer complained about the girl and because of the complaint she was held down as they poured boiling water over her naked body. Thank God some Americans, now have this girl in their children’s home in Asia. I am amazed at the number of tiny girls we have seen who have such horrible scars on their faces and bodies as a result of torture.

We must no longer bury our heads in the sand but do something to intervene in this tragedy. We have traveled to and lived in Asian countries especially some of those in the Himalayan mountain areas ( India, Nepal, Pakistan and Tibet, China) etc. Many countries are a source for trafficked children and also a trafficking destination. These are also countries where Christians are severely persecuted. Christianity tells mankind to take care of each other and to care for the least of these, many other religions do not instruct in the same manner, so people do the opposite, use each other for personal gain.

Now, getting back to the United States, where the sex trade is feeding the demands of “child sex tourists” from the US and Europe who visit countries like Thailand, Cambodia, India and Nepal, for the purpose of having sex with children, especially those living in the streets who are desperate enough to do anything for food. Many of these tourists also frequent brothels where children are being held against their will and forced to have sex with many customers daily. We have also seen children used as beggars or as soldiers subjected to beatings and rape, living in inhumane conditions.