Blog #10: HIV Prevalence

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17019369

HIV prevalence and predicators among sex trafficked women

• “Despite the rapid spread of India’s HIV epidemic through commercial sex and the large numbers of minor girls trafficked to India for sex work each year, little HIV research has been conducted among victims of sex trafficking.”

The above statement angered me to a great extent. HIV prevalence among sex trafficked women is at an all time high yet little research has been done? Is America being ignorant about this issue? YES, very much so. How could there not be research conducted on such a horrible, traumatic, life-altering issue. There was a study conducted to examine the prevalence and predictors of HIV infection among sex-trafficked women and girls rescued from brothels in Mumbai, India. The results were nothing short of mind boggling! Approximately one quarter (22.9%) of trafficked individuals tested positive for HIV. The mean age was marginally younger for women and girls infected with HIV (15.9 years) as compared to those not infected (17.2 years). “Girls trafficked as minors reported longer periods of brothel confinement as compared to those trafficked at older ages.” this study really baffled me! I was so shocked at how many girls had contracted HIV at such young ages. That disease will ruin their lives, and to understand that they had no choice really upsets me.

• “Findings demonstrate the need for increased attention to HIV among young victims of sex trafficking in research and practice, and to the rescue of sex trafficking victims as a form of HIV prevention.”

Blog #9: Videos on Sex Trafficking

The above video is very upsetting. This girl had dreams for her life that were shattered into pieces after she was fooled by awful people and sold into the sex business. Her story really touched my heart because it is a detailed account of her experience as a brutalized, dehumanized woman. How can people be so awful?

• Both of these videos dig deep into the emotional side of sex trafficking. In the second video many emotions are caused due to the song being played on the video and the disturbing images associated with sex trafficking. I was really touched by seeing this video, and I think that many more people would be too if they watched these. America needs to gain knowledge about this issue in order to change the circumstances.

Blog #8: Taken

TAKEN

(America’s First Motion Picture on Modern Day Slavery)

The movie taken was released in 2008, and I being the curious mind that I am, ventured out to see it with my boyfriend. The movie is about a girl who goes on a vacation with her friend to France. They meet a boy there who seems very nice, and they tell him they want to party with him that night and were they are staying (very dumb of them.) The boy comes back with 2 very large men and kidnaps the 2 girls and this is the beginning of the sex slavery experience. The girl’s father finds out that she has been kidnapped and he ventures to France to look for the girl and retraces all of her tracks. Her father is very determined and is a body guard for a living so he did all of the right things in searching for his daughter. In a brothel, he finds his daughter’s friend dead, but not his daughter. Eventually, he keeps searching and finds his daughter; they are reunited but a lot happened in the past.

This movie really scared everyone that watched it because it brought reality to America about sex slavery. I think this movie was appropriate because it gave everyone a reality check about traveling to other countries after Natalie Holloway’s death. This movie really scared me and stressed me out because it was so real and logical. Tons of girls in different countries worldwide are trafficked just like these 2 girls were in the movie. People were scared of this movie and we only hit the lives of 2 girls when in reality there are thousands and thousands trafficked each year.

Blog #7: Hitting Close to Home…

Sex Trafficking hits close to home; 60-90 Women are Affected in Franklin County

This story really hit close to home because Theresa Flores was an average American girl who had a dad who owned a large company and she was a wealthy high school girl. These men took her to Detroit, MI to a hotel where she was auctioned off to a dozen men. The highest bidder got to have sex with her for one night; she was drugged, beaten, and molested. “Somebody saw I was vulnerable. They saw they could make money off of me, and I was living a nightmare and afraid to live my life,” Flores said. At the end of this article, Wagner talks about how other people can help by simply being aware and informed.

http://thelantern.com

• “Most human trafficking in the U.S. is related to workers who are here illegally and held as virtual slaves.”
• ““We didn’t know how deep it runs and how rampant it runs,” Wagner said. “If you think it’s not in your backyard, you’re fooling yourself.”
• “Human trafficking is the second largest criminal industry in the world, with 15,000 to 18,000 people trafficked in the U.S. annually.”

Blog #6: Modern Day Form of Slavery

Sex Trafficking

• “Sex trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act is under the age of 18 years.”

My Response: I feel awful for what the victims of sex trafficking have to go through and deal with. It also makes me sick how people lure the women, men, girls, or boys into sex trafficking by promising them a good job, a false marriage proposal, being kidnapped, or sold by their relatives. It provides me with a bit of comfort that when the government identifies a person who has been sold into this sex slavery, the government can help to get them help and help them rebuild their lives, but until they are identified, there is nothing anyone can do to help them.

Growing Up Online 11/11/09

• Today in class we read an essay about the internet. I did not agree with the extent that this essay was portrayed. The writer of this essay is so firm and thinks that his opinion is the only one that goes. They are making way too big of an assumption that everyone uses chat rooms and every teen tries to conceal his or her identity by using the internet.
• Also, I found it very disturbing that these people monitor chat rooms such as the self injury one. That to me, was disgusting and much to gruesome. –> Talking about the blades being used to cut and pulling the skin tight is not something that needs to be discussed in an essay talking about the bad ways of the internet. 
  
  
  

Blog #5: Children of The night

http://www.childrenofthenight.org/home.html

CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT

Children of the night is a private non-profit tax organization founded in 1979 and helps benefit children ages 11-17 who are forced into child prostitution. After doing my first chunk of research, I really do support this organization and really hope that many other people feel as passionately as i do about helping these innocent children. This organization makes differences in 100s of children’s lives each year, and that right there says a lot about the people who volunteer their time effort and lives to help these distressed children. Many of the people who work for this organization also have to testify in courts against the pimps who kidnapped and forced these children to have sex. What strong human beings these volunteering women and men are.

• “Child prostitutes require specialized care for effective intervention. Most of the children victimized by prostitution were first victimized by a parent or early caregiver. Most have been tortured by treacherous pimps, and many testify in lengthy court proceedings against the pimps who have forced them to work as prostitutes.”
• “In most cases these children do not have appropriate homes to return to, and the only relative who is a suitable guardian may live far away from the child’s hometown. For many the only option is an out of home placement, college dorm, maternity home or mental health program”

Blog #4: Dateline’s View on Child Sex Slavery

Dateline goes undercover with a human rights group to expose sex trafficking in Cambodia

At best the girls’ families get a few hundred dollars, a debt the girls then owe to the brothel owners. It can take years to work it off. It’s a form of slavery. And when girls refuse to go along, they are beaten.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4038249/

• “Inside the world of child sex trafficking, each year, by some estimates, hundreds of thousands of girls and boys are bought, sold or kidnapped and then forced to have sex with grown men. Dateline’s investigation leads to the troubled and distant land of Cambodia. We reveal what “tourists,” like one American doctor, may be up to, and we’ll take you inside a dramatic operation to rescue the children.”
• “They are children born into poverty and sold for sex. And while the thousands of men who flock here each year — many of them Americans — may think that they’re involved in nothing more than prostitution, by any definition it is rape.”

Chris Hansen: “Why has child sex trafficking become such an important issue for you and the Bush administration?”
Colin Powell: “Because it’s the worst kind of human exploitation imaginable.  Can you imagine young children, learning their ABCs or whatever the equivalent is in their language, being used as sexual slaves for predators?  It is a sin against humanity, and it is a horrendous crime.”

My response:

Colin Powell could not be more correct in his assumptions. Child sex slavery is the worst kind of human exploitation possible in our society. These children are innocent and barely even know what is happening to them or why this kind of danger has been brought upon them. “Twelve-year-olds for sale. As shocking as that sounds, we’re about to find out in some places that’s considered old. Children who should be in elementary school are being exploited by adults.” How are we letting something this immoral, unethical, and down right absurd go on in other countries.

How is America’s first priority not stopping the exploitation of the youth. Children are innocent and do not deserve this kind of crude treatment. This dehumanizes little girls and boys and will have them scarred for the rest of their lives. In my opinion, this is worse than killing a child because this completely takes away their sense of being and self-worth.

Blog #3: Stories from the Women Themselves (Global Post & ABC News)

Nomin’s Story

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/asia/090629/stolen-mongolia

• “When we arrived the couple told us it’s not a good time to enter university. They told us we had to work in a nightclub until the semester starts,” says Nomin (not her real name), now 25, in a near whisper during an interview in an Ulan Bator parking lot. “Everybody was speaking Korean. We were wondering what was going on.”
• Between 3,000 and 5,000 Mongolians are trafficked every year, according to NGO estimates; the vast majority are women and children recruited by deceit to work in the sex industry. They are lured by promises of lucrative jobs in nightclubs and massage parlors only to find themselves trapped in a system of modern slavery. Their passports are confiscated and they are locked in “debt bondage,” in which traffickers demand exorbitant repayment for travel and other costs.

Above, is an excerpt from the Global Post about sex trafficking. Nomin was a Mongolian girl who wanted to study in Korea and saw this couple’s ad for a house with no tuition and no cost of living. She and 2 other girls went to korea but they were not doing anything close to attending a university. The girls were beaten and forced to strip and work in night clubs. Nomin eventually escaped out of a bathroom window and headed back to Mongolia. This story really got to me. How sick and perverted do you have to be to trick innocent minds, kidnap them, and force them into the “business of sex.” Although this is a story from a Mongolian girl, sex trafficking happens all over American streets as well.

“Debbie’s” Story

• “Debbie is one of thousands of American girls who was taken from their homes and normal lives and made a sex slave.”
• “FBI estimates that well over 100,000 Americans are taken and made sex slaves today.

Debbie’s story really frightened me because it all started with her talking to her friend in the driveway. She went outside because her friend Bianca said she needed to talk to Debbie and when Bianca gave Debbie a hug, 2 white men pulled Debbie into the Cadillac that they were all driving in. If that is not disgusting I do not know what is. One can only imagine how Debbie was feeling while being betrayed by someone she thought she was her friend and kidnapped. She was gang raped and told she was going to be shot multiple different times. I can not even imagine what sick minded people do this to young girls, and I also cannot imagine what these girls went through.

Blog #2: Trafficking of Young Women

Sex Trafficking/Key Players in the Game/How the girls get sold

• “The trafficking of young women and girls has increased dramatically in scope and magnitude over the past two decades as a result of globalisation (Unifem 1999). It is a gross violation of human rights and an example of the way in which the effects of globalisation are not gender neutral. The ongoing abuses of human rights and the growing social and economic inequality within and between countries has lead to an environment in which many women have few choices and resources, and are thus vulnerable to being lured, mislead or forced through kidnapping and rape into being trafficked (Unifem 1999). Once trafficked, women are exploited and abused in circumstances that are tantamount to modern-day slavery. Young women are typically forced into the sex industry but may also be forced into begging, agriculture, domestic service, forced marriage or sweatshop factories (GAATW n.d.(a)). Whether bonded by debt, fears for the safety of their families or by their illegal status, many women are ‘sold’ a number of times and may remain captive for years.”

Reading this deeply scared me. I just imagined if i was one of those girls that was kidnapped and forced into sex slavery. How demeaning? Slavery was abolished and this sex trafficking is much the same. Why is the government not taking drastic acts to stop this. It really bothers me how much of an issue this is over in other countries. Also according to this website key players in the sex game are crooked governments, sex tourists, organized crime syndicates. People actually think that these young girls as young as 6 years old want to be doing this disgusting act. No, 6 year olds want to be playing in the mud with their friends and coloring and learning. Not performing oral sex on old men.

 

• “In Amsterdam, it costs you 200 guilders for 2 hours. And the girls watch the clock,you know? Here it costs you 10,000 bolivars for the whole night. And they’re lovely girls. They enjoy sex. They want to please you.” 45 year old man from the Netherlands (ECPAT FAQ n.d.) “This is such an open, natural culture. Girls are so willing and open, they want to please. They’re sexual from the age of six…” 52 year old man from Canada (ECPAT FAQ n.d.)

It is so sickening how men can actually do this and not feel disgusted with themselves. Questions also arise like how did the girls get sold into this awful game. The answers disturbed me more than anything. Another factor tying into this is the difference in cultures some men think that the girls like it and feed into all of this disgust while other men like missionaries try to stop and demolish these crude organizations.

• 3 percent were sold by a boyfriend; • 4 percent were raped and sold; • 5 percent were raped by a stepfather and sold; • 32 percent were tricked and sold by non-family; • 8 percent were sold by patrons to pay debts; and • 4 percent went to the city to find jobs and were then sold.

http://www.unesco.org/ccivs/New-SiteCCSVI/institutions/jpc-youth/youth-open-forum/Section_for_Youth/Resources_and_tools/Other_documents_on_youth/OXFAM_INTERNATIONAL_YOUTH_PARLIAMENT/Trafficking.pdf