Last night I watched the movie Trade. It’s been sitting in my Netflix queue for awhile now, but I’d heard that the movie, while great, was a bit disturbing. The reviewers were correct. The movie showed a very realistic account of how sex trafficking takes place throughout the world. It was based on a New York Times magazine article on subject. In that article from 2004, they estimate that there have been 100,000 to 150,000 sex slaves in the United States since 2001. (The FBI estimates that there are now 300,000 every year.) The girls, boys and women who become sex slaves can be found in cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta as well as middle-class suburbs.
In order for the business to work, these victims are rarely completely hidden. It’s just that many people don’t pay attention to the possibility that they around and it’s why they go unnoticed. That was the case in the New York Times article. A sex trafficking operation was held in a house in the suburbs in Plainfield, New Jersey. Many of the neighbors said they noticed a lot of girls going in and out of the house and men with expensive cars, but they didn’t realize what was happening.
A lot of this stuff completely shocked me. I knew about sex trafficking, but I honestly didn’t pay too much attention. When I realized that Atlanta was one of the busiest US centers for sex trafficking, I thought about how many times I’ve been in that airport…It’s just amazing what we’re not aware of when we don’t want to be aware.
I have a lot more thoughts, but I’m just not quite sure how to put them into words yet. For now, I’ve added a video clip and some links below.
Informational Links
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Balanced Melting Pot
1 year ago
Unfortunately, there are a fair share of these victims who come from Haiti. A friend of mine who was a social worker in South Florida would describe finding families where a single dad with 3 children ranging from 5 years to 14 years-old has a random 12 year-old Haitian girl living with him who will not speak. Apparently she was “adopted”, but none of the children can explain how or why she got there. It’s very sad, but I think about like the war on drugs. As long as there’s a demand for it in the richer countries, people from poorer countries are going to continue paying the price.
shannon
1 year ago
My brain just can’t make sense of it all. The scarier part is that it seems the demand is increasing and the purchasers are becoming more violent. It makes my soul sad.