Sex trafficking: It's an American problem

A much-loved, 13-year-old girl in the Midwest was standing in the driveway outside her middle-class home, waiting for a friend to come by so they could hang out. A car drove up; when she tentatively approached to better hear what was being said through the open window, the door opened. She was grabbed. For the better part of the next year, this little girl was a sex slave. I read about the case while doing research for a talk at the Soroptimists' annual meeting a few years ago. It's not unique.

Unlike most of the girls, boys, and women like her, she was one of the "lucky" ones who escaped her life as a human trafficking victim. Unlike the 300,000 children at risk for sex trafficking in the U.S. - many of them homeless youths of average age 11 to 14 - she wasn't so long in that world to become intertwined with its terrifying underbelly as an adult sex worker, that hybrid between perceptions of "forced" and "choice," a victim turned to... What? Victim or criminal? Laws everywhere still focus prosecution primarily on the "provider," rather than the customer.

April is Sexual Abuse Awareness Month. Governments are slowly becoming more aware; the U.S. and 15 states have sex trafficking-related laws, with a few more exploring them, but even those need improvement to effectively combat its strong grip on society. Consider its proliferation at truck stops; a close relative (who left the long-haul business two months ago) has been telling me stories of routinely - routinely, mind you - being approached by youths clearly too young to be soliciting, knocking on the truck's door as he tried to sleep, offering themselves for a pittance and with what he described as "a dead look in their eyes."

Unlike other violent crime rates which are steadily declining in the U.S., sex trafficking is rising. Not in Thailand or other highly publicized locations far away, but in the self-perceived enlightened West. Trafficking is alive and well in the U.K. and the U.S., where 83 percent of victims trafficked for sex or other forced labor are American citizens.

Britain discovered in 2014 that in just one town, Rotherham, 1,400 children had been victims of trafficking in a decade and a half, while those who were aware of or suspected it underplayed the problem. That was a wakeup call; investigations revealed similar atrocities in other towns, and Prime Minister David Cameron called it "a national threat," proposing criminal actions against those who allow it to happen.

In the U.S. a bipartisan group of Congresswomen lead a charge to revive the previously failed Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. Among its provisions is a philosophical change, seeing victims more as victims, even past adulthood, by focusing more on the customers - those who ask no questions, who ignore the imbalance in human dignity and its possible signs (poverty, lack of free movement, apparent youth, control by or fear of others) for their own benefit.

The legislation passed the House (its cosponsors include Idaho's Rep. Raul Labrador), but is facing hurdles in the Senate. One of the partisan objections is against the potential for aid to include abortions for trafficked victims. Others argue that laws already exist, although proponents respond they are not powerful enough, and in some cases, unclear so "johns" are not prosecuted as traffickers when they could be.

With no other crime do we blame the victim. Yet an image persists of some form of willingness, even eagerness, to "participate" in a situation that begins with force, threats, and control - psychological as well as physical, which is why it is also the most heinous. They call this exertion of mental control "breaking." Over time victims believe they have no value, aren't good for anything else.

Enough. It's up to the rest of us to prove otherwise.

Sholeh Patrick, J. D. is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at [email protected]