Human trafficking was not abolished in the United States after the Civil War. In fact, there are more victims trafficked in the United States than there were prior to the installment of the thirteenth amendment. Many brought into the United States are innocently seeking a better life and others happen to be the victims of traffickers simply because of their vulnerability. Because of the underground nature of trafficking, the statistics are less than reliable and much is left to speculation.
Human Trafficking is modern day Slavery
To help focus on what can be known about the prevalence of underage sex workers operating within the United States, Lawyers Against Human Trafficking defines sex trafficking as, “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.” Although many slaves within the United States are citizens, many others are smuggled into the country with false promises of financial security. The problem of sex trafficking has actually become worse within the past few years.
The average age of an exploited girl in the sex industry is 12 to 14 years of age,
but in the past decade, younger and younger victims have been recorded. It is estimated that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year. Additionally, 100,000-300,000 American citizens fall into the “at risk” category for human trafficking. Many of these are homeless and therefore targeted by traffickers.
At least four-fifths of the identified victims each year are United States citizens.
With statistics such as these, sex trafficking stands as a major social problem in the United States, and abroad, but there have been few developments in combatting the problem.
Although labor trafficking tends to target specifically Mexican workers, the sex trafficking industry targets primarily black and white girls.
Over sixty-two percent of girls working in the United States were white and over thirty-two percent were black.
The most vulnerable girls, when it comes to trafficking, are runaways. Once a girl enters the streets, she is likely to have nowhere to turn. A trafficker is likely to approach her in the first forty-eight hours. Once a girl becomes intertwined in the sex industry, her chances of getting out dwindle. Traffickers often hold their runaways captive by manipulation, which is why victims often shy away from help offered by authorities. The reality of forced prostitution can be incredibly grim. As the Department of State noted, “sex trafficking has devastating consequences for minors, including long-lasting physical and psychological trauma, disease (including HIV/AIDS), drug addiction, unwanted pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and possible death.” In order to protect our young girls, many researchers and social workers feel certain that more work must be done to help runaways.
Sex trafficking cases far outnumber incidents of labor trafficking in the United States. Eighty percent of trafficking in the United States is for sex while twenty percent is for labor. Although these numbers clearly indicate a greater need for sex trafficking enforcement and prevention, the government focuses the majority of its resources on labor trafficking investigations. In the past decade, only seven percent of investigated cases had to do with sex trafficking. When understanding sex trafficking, it is important to look at the girls who are targeted in order to best prevent future incidents. As research has shown, sex traffickers usually focus on girls with disrupted home lives, or those who have been sexually abused. In fact, psychological trauma literature documents that ninety percent of girls in the sex industry are sexually abused before entering the industry. It is the emotional trauma associated with abuse that makes them relatively easy to manipulate for traffickers. Additionally, poverty plays a large role for girls involved in the industry. Almost all of the girls brought out of slavery were from lower-middle to working class families; this is a result of the decreased stability caused by poverty.