In any given month, several news items appear announcing yet another sentence in the sex trafficking of a child. Thousands of “unsolved” cases involving America’s fastest-growing crime, human trafficking, are not reported as often. Task forces like Operation Guardian Angel, a unique undercover police investigation targeting the demand for child prostitution, help bring many to justice.
too many cases
Some all-too-common examples from recent stories:
- A young woman was smuggled from Mexico to New York only to become a sex slave and prisoner, forced into prostitution with up to fifteen clients a day. When her own son died because her captors refused to seek treatment, the abusers forced the victim to hide her son’s remains. The defendants were Domingo Salazar and his wife Norma Méndez.
- Antoinette Davis, charged with human trafficking and felony child abuse of her own son after surveillance film captured her consummate defendant Andrette McNeill, taking Antoinette’s five-year-old daughter to a Sanford hotel, shortly before that his body was found.
Staggering numbers of victims
The numbers are staggering, even if hard to come by, given the “underground” nature of the crime. UNESCO’s Trafficking in Persons Statistics Project described the problem: “When it comes to statistics, the trafficking of girls and women is one of several highly emotional topics that seem to overwhelm critical faculties. The numbers take on a life of their own, gaining acceptance through repetition, often with little research on its derivations”.
UNICEF estimated worldwide casualties in women and children at 1.75 million, while the FBI is more modest at a 2001 estimate of 700,000 victims. The most cited in various media reports is 1.2 million women and children, which falls somewhere between these two extremes.
14,500 to 17,500 trafficked to the US each year
While the most frequently cited number of “victims of human trafficking” is 300,000 total in the US, what is known with greater certainty is that the number of victims trafficked into the United States each year is 14,500 to 17,500 according to US State Department statistics (2005).
The average age of exploitation of human trafficking in the United States is set between 12 and 14 years for girls and between 11 and 13 years for boys. Internationally, crime tends to be younger, with child prostitutes as young as 12 considered “too old” in countries like Cambodia.
Abroad, the problem might seem worse: in Thailand, for example, at least 60% of child prostitutes were found to have HIV; however, of the estimated 1.2 million victims worldwide, a disproportionate percentage are assumed to be Americans. crimes
The revenue generated from this horrific crime is estimated at $9.5 billion dollars. The costs of doing “business” are lives ruined, children abused, and long-term damage done to millions of victims. According to the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), “a study of 207 women trafficked for prostitution in Europe found that the vast majority (95 percent) suffered physical and sexual abuse…” (Zimmerman et al 2006).
Human Trafficking in the US
The US Department of Justice estimated that 200,000 American children were “at risk of being trafficked into the sex industry,” according to Attorney General John Ashcroftt in 2003. Most of these victims are from East Asia, estimated at some 7,000 victims by the Department of Justice, with up to 5,500 victims from Europe and Latin America. Unlike many countries, the US is proactive in fighting the second fastest growing crime, hampered by the difficulty of prosecution.
Difficulty judging
Human trafficking is often difficult to prosecute. According to Dorchen Leidholdt, director of the Families Center for Bettered Women’s Legal Services, “Victims of sex trafficking often find themselves in situations where their very survival depends on their external compliance with the traffickers’ demands. Victims often have to pose smiling for porn videos. photos, dancing with clients, signing prostitution contracts, and even marrying their traffickers, all of which are later used by the defense attorney to prove that the victims were “voluntary prostitutes,” not victims of trafficking. coercion, such evidence would be considered irrelevant or considered probative of sex trafficking.” Prosecutors are forced to prove coercion or force, which is often difficult with unwilling victims who fear they may be charged themselves.
Definition
The most common “definition” of human trafficking is less sensational than the crimes they are actually intended to represent. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000 describes the crime: “is the recruitment, smuggling, transportation, harboring, purchase or sale of a human being by force, threats , fraud, deception or coercion for the purpose of exploitation”. that is, prostitution, pornography, migrant labor, sweatshops, domestic servitude, forced labor, servitude, peonage, or involuntary servitude.”