Child Trafficking (USA)
If you need to report a crime, please call the national human trafficking toll free hotline:
888-3737-888
With a focus on the issue of human trafficking abroad, millions of dollars have been raised by organizations and federal agencies to help create awareness campaigns to assist in the rehabilitation and support of foreign nationals victimized by traffickers, but too little effort has been given to shed light on the issue happening with American children. The unfortunate pattern is the criminalization of American children who have been victimized by traffickers. Awareness about domestic trafficking of minors is imperative in order to urge new legislation that will allocate funds to assist in the creation of new rehabilitation shelters, preventive measures, and tougher laws.
Please support the petition to protect American children forced into prostitution by encouraging state lawmakers to adopt safe harbor laws.
1. The average age of entry into prostitution is 12-years old with most recruited by force or coercion.
2. Online social networking websites, malls, and schools are popular targets for traffickers to locate new victims.
3. Interstate truck stops and websites such as Craigslist, Backpages, and personal ads are popular places to advertise sex with a minor.
4. The United States is the #1 supplier of child pornography, with more than 50% of it having originated in the U.S.
5. A profit of $32 billion dollars a year is generated by human trafficking, with 80% of the cases affecting women and children.
6. Cities such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, and Detroit are known to be major hubs for child trafficking. With the recession affecting millions of families around the nation, up to 300,000 American minors are vulnerable to being trafficked each year within U.S. borders, yet there are fewer than 5,000 sex trafficking convictions.
7. Victims are usually incarcerated due to the lack of rehabilitation shelters throughout the United States.
8. The FBI has publicly stated that child trafficking in the US is a fast growing crime that affects all children and families.
What is Human Trafficking?
In short, human and sex trafficking of persons is the illegal trade in human beings through abduction, the use of threat or force, deception, fraud, or sale for the purpose of forced labor and or commercial sex. Trafficking also applies to people who are held against their will to pay off a debt—otherwise known as debt bondage or peonage.
What is sex trafficking?
Sex trafficking means the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, which means any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person. Trafficking is a crime that is prosecuted under federal law and/or state laws and often includes other crimes such as kidnapping, human smuggling, slavery, peonage, visa fraud, labor violations, racketeering, assault, murder, rape.
Traffickers
Traffickers can be male or female. They can be part of an international or national organized crime network or act on an individual basis. Traffickers can be upstanding citizens who are wealthy or poor individuals looking to find ways to exploit others to gain wealth.
Please Note: Trafficking does’t require transportation. Under the definition of trafficking an individual does’t have to cross borders to be a victim, instead it’s the methods used by the traffickers to recruit and hold an individual in an exploitative situation in which a trafficking case can be determined.