Setting the Captives Free: Human Trafficking

Did you know that it is estimated that somewhere between 700,000 and four million persons are sold into slavery annually worldwide; there is no region that is unaffected and this includes the United States. Human trafficking is slavery; today the slave trade is larger than it has ever been at any other point in history. Sex trafficking is one form of slavery. Across the globe over one million children are forced into the sex trade every year. The average age for children in the sex trade is between 11 and 14 years of age; they can be as young as 5. These are the facts, slavery is still in existence today and sex trafficking is a growing industry worldwide. Yet I believe that there is hope for the victims through Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can break the chains of bondage and He has called us to take action. In Isaiah 1:17 Christians are commanded to, “learn to do good; seek justice; correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless; plead the widow's cause“.

Trafficking Facts:

Human Trafficking

Defined as those forced to perform labor or services in conditions of involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery through force, fraud, or coercion.

Takes three major forms:

1) Bonded labor

2) Forced labor

3) Trafficked labor

- The USA is supplying much of our own demand for human trafficking.

- Largest form of human trafficking in USA is Sex Trafficking; though forced labor runs a close second.

Sex Trafficking

Sex Trafficking is the second largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world today.

What is Sex trafficking?

1) Those under 18 involved in commercial sex acts

2) Those over 18 involved in commercial sex acts, through force, fraud, or coercion

- It is the second largest illigal money making industry after drugs.

It is the top money making slave trade...

o Girls are sold over and over again, then they can be used in other aspects of the industry (such as recruiting and “PR”), their children can be sold, and when the young women are spent the pimps can sell their organs.

- 2,000,000 children are sex trafficked worldwide in a year

- 3 primary origins of today’s trafficked sex slaves = South Asia, South/East Asia, Central/Eastern Europe

Most slaves in South Asia
Per capita = Highest levels in Europe

In the USA:

100,000 children and young women are sex trafficked every day.
12 is the average age of entry into pornography and prostitution in the U.S. annually.
Pimps commonly sell minor girls for $400.00 an hour on America’s streets.
Minors are sold an average of 10-15 times a day, 6 days a week, totaling between 9,360 and 14,040 sex acts a year (minimum of $3,744,000 a year).
The girls receive none of the money.
Under 5% are boys.
May be runaways, kids who have been abandoned, but many are lured or coerced by clever predators.
Traffickers are finding that American children are easier to recruit and sell than foreign victims because there is no need to cross the border.
100,000 to 293,000 children have become sexual commodities in the US.
Nationally 450,000 children run away from home each year.
1 out of every 3 teens on the street will be lured toward prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home. Statistically, this means at least 150,000 children lured into prostitution each year.
12 is the average age of entry into porn and prostitution, but their ages are often mislabeled.
The sale of child pornography has become a $3 billion dollar industry.
Over 100,000 websites offer child pornography.
55 percent of internet child pornography comes from the U.S.
Over 100,000 websites offer child pornography.
1 out of 5 pornographic images is of a child.
Approximately 55% of street girls engage in formal prostitution.
Of the girls engaged in formal prostitution, 75% work for a pimp.
It is estimated that as many as 300,000 American children are working as prostitutes in the U.S.A.