I don't normally sit through long YouTube videos, but this one is worth sitting through, if you can stomach it. It isn't easy, but it is eye-opening.

Jaco Booyens, the founder of the anti-sex trafficking organization "Share Together" got involved because his sister was trafficked after winning the South African version of American Idol. Her abuser, a record company executive, signed her to a contract with his recording company, then he raped her and pimped her out in the industry. It took 6 years to rescue her.




If you don't have the time, or don't think you can handle it, here are some of the highlights from the video:

- The USA is number one in the world for commercializing child sex slavery.

-To date, the youngest child rescued by this organization was 2 years old. She required more than 30 surgeries to repair her body. She will never be able to have children.

-76,000 children per day are sex trafficked in Texas alone.

- More than 500,000 children are trafficked nationwide, meaning we have more slaves in the US now than we did when slavery was legal.

-The average age of the victim being trafficked is 12 years.

-Some of the "pimps" selling these children are the parents of the child. The "pimp parent" is the fastest growing demographic.

-This is a multi-billion dollar industry in the US alone.(Just an aside, but think about how much influence that can buy, not counting the people of influence who are ensnared as customers.)

- The average life expectancy from the first rape/beginning of trafficking is 7 years: suicide, murder, overdose, disease, complications from forced rape, abortion, etc.

-Only 2% of rescued victims are able to re-enter society as normal, functioning human beings.

-The victim is sold for sex 10-20 times per day.

-The pimp can make about $250,000 per year, per victim.

- This isn't just happening in a seedy part of town. Sex trafficking predation has no class/lifestyle boundaries. It is 90% male and it includes rich to poor, black/white/brown etc. It includes judges, doctors, clergy, lawyers, CEOs, janitors, politicians, bankers, the Chief of Police, the military, everyone. It includes atheists and Christians. No walk of life is immune, and no neighborhood is immune. It is in every zip code.

-Young girls whose fathers are not present in their lives in a healthy and meaningful way are especially vulnerable. The pimp will romance them and woo them into the lifestyle. The girls are often groomed to believe that their pimp is their boyfriend and confuse what they have for love.

-The victims are grabbed early enough in life to be groomed to believe they are at fault, or that their lifestyle is somehow okay.

-If a victim turns 18 and is rounded up in a bust, the victim is treated like a criminal in the system.

-It is driven by easy access to pornography, especially at a young age. Internet pornography is often "free" in order to groom and build a customer base.

-If you are watching pornography on the internet, even if the participants are of legal age, you are contributing to the problem because at least some of the participants are likely to be sex slavery victims.



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One of my former employers was the target of a sex trafficking investigation. He didn't care for the fact that he was falsely accused and did something pretty unheard of.

He approached the Feds with a proposition for a partnership, about a million dollars of his own money, and the ability to get the Feds a foot into the door of clubs located nationwide. Over the years they have not only had a big impact on reducing trafficking activities within nightclubs, but have trained thousands of people who are able to identify the signs outside of work as well.

One of the reasons we never have our kids sleep over at friends house and only rarely with extremely trusted family.

You never know who is around / lives next door, etc.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
One of the reasons we never have our kids sleep over at friends house and only rarely with extremely trusted family.

You never know who is around / lives next door, etc.

I can't agree more. On one evening in high school, we had one of our friends break down and admit to us that he had been raped at age 11-12 by a friend's father during a sleep-over at the predator's hunting cabin. Several kids were on the trip, but apparently our friend was targeted and put into a separate bedroom alone.



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quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
One of my former employers was the target of a sex trafficking investigation....

I appreciate what your employer did, but I am confused by the situation you describe. If he wasn't guilty, how did he have this special ability to get the feds in the door of clubs that specialized in child trafficking? If I am misreading what you've said, I apologize.



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Rich people can go places most of us cannot just because of $$$. I would neve spend $1k on a bottle of anything.

quote:

-76,000 children per day are sex trafficked in Texas alone.

Let me start by saying there is no more despicable crime than this, nor can I imagine a punishment horrible enough to be considered "cruel and unusual" for child molesters/traffickers.

However, I'm having a little trouble believing the statistic quoted above. Annually maybe, but daily?

I dont think he means 76,000 per day taken for trafficking.....rather 76,000 per day are trafficked. Meaning pimped.....sold......or other wise.

quote:

Originally posted by stu1000rr:
I dont think he means 76,000 per day taken for trafficking.....rather 76,000 per day are trafficked. Meaning pimped.....sold......or other wise.

That is my understanding as well, that is the current number being pimped.

quote:

Originally posted by mrmn50:
Rich people can go places most of us cannot just because of $$$. I would neve spend $1k on a bottle of anything.

I think you need to get some prescriptions checked sir.

quote:

Originally posted by TigerDore:

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
One of the reasons we never have our kids sleep over at friends house and only rarely with extremely trusted family.

You never know who is around / lives next door, etc.

I can't agree more. On one evening in high school, we had one of our friends break down and admit to us that he had been raped at age 11-12 by a friend's father during a sleep-over at the predator's hunting cabin. Several kids were on the trip, but apparently our friend was targeted and put into a separate bedroom alone.

Yeah, we're not doing the sleepover thing with my son. No way.

I think I have an incorrect idea of what "sex trafficking" is....

So it is not necessarily the kidnapping or otherwise obtaining people to be shipped elsewhere for the purpose of the sex industry, it is also the individual transactions of those people?

^^^ Yes. Every transaction is a "trafficking" event.

And with the stories about child sexual abuse in South Texas that are actually documented, it's easy to believe that there are thousands of transactions a day.

As for the US being #1 in the world, I have to ask about the quality of reporting that went into that statistic - someone wanting to have paid sex with a minor would find it a breeze in northern Mexico. Maybe it's the same in other parts, but it's horribly common along that border.

quote:

Originally posted by AllenInWV:
I think I have an incorrect idea of what "sex trafficking" is....

So it is not necessarily the kidnapping or otherwise obtaining people to be shipped elsewhere for the purpose of the sex industry, it is also the individual transactions of those people?

Yes. This rarely ever (i.e. almost never) involves kidnapping/drugging a kid and shipping them off. This isn't like the movie "Taken".

Merely using a juvenile for commercial sexual activity (that is, pimping out an underage prostitute) is trafficking.

Most often, it involves extra-vulnerable broken kids with a history of personal trauma (runaways, abuse victims, foster kids, homeless kids, hungry kids, drug addicted kids, kids with ultra-shitty home lives, etc.) being groomed by manipulative adults (sometimes even their own relatives, or even other juveniles) who use mind-games, coercion, promises, and lies in order to manipulate a kid over a period of time into agreeing quasi-voluntarily to participate in underage prostitution. Threats and physical violence are often a component, but that's usually on the tail end, after the pimp already has their hooks sunk deeply into the kid's head, not the front end.

Think of the relationship between these pimps and these kids as more along the lines of a toxic/abusive/manipulative family or dating relationship, rather than a stranger snatching kids out of the schoolyard and forcibly stuffing them in a van.

I'd like to see President Trump make beefed-up human trafficking legislation a keystone of his second term; both for sexual purposes and labor. I especially think that in the case of underage sexual slavery the offense should carry a death sentence.

quote:

I appreciate what your employer did, but I am confused by the situation you describe. If he wasn't guilty, how did he have this special ability to get the feds in the door of clubs that specialized in child trafficking? If I am misreading what you've said, I apologize.

If I recall correctly a person (or persons) suspected of being trafficked were employed in one of his clubs. Law enforcement assumed that the clubs themselves had something to do with it. They didn't.

Due to these types of false allegations and the expense that often goes along with them, it is sometimes difficult to get people to cooperate with law enforcement. His status and involvement made it easy for club owners nationwide to get on board.

If you want to learn more about what they do you can read more about it at the link below. They are the Association Of Club Executives and their program is COAST (Club Operators Against Sex Trafficking). So far they claim 14,000 industry workers in over 235 establishments across 35 cities have been trained by federal agents to identify and report trafficking activity.

http://www.acenational.org/COAST

In this particular case it's not aimed particularly at the trafficking of minors, but minors are certainly within the scope of what they do.

FYI here are a few organizations you can support to help stop this:
https://vets4childrescue.org/
https://www.erasechildtrafficking.org/
http://ourrescue.org/

I already support a few organizations called the state and federal governments. I'd like to hold them accountable for doing a better job.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:

quote:

-76,000 children per day are sex trafficked in Texas alone.

Let me start by saying there is no more despicable crime than this, nor can I imagine a punishment horrible enough to be considered "cruel and unusual" for child molesters/traffickers.

However, I'm having a little trouble believing the statistic quoted above. Annually maybe, but daily?

Agreed, on all counts.

Although I'm not naive and accept that such despicable acts do occur, especially in other parts of the world, I'm having difficulty accepting the supposed frequency they are reported to occur in the U.S.

Years ago child prostitution cases would be reported, but in more recent years the new term "trafficking" has been attached to the issue...color me jaded but when new words are attached to old issues and definitions are suddenly expanded so that reported numbers make dramatic increases, I'm a bit suspicious of the intentions of those doing so... ie, the way the definition of sexual assault or sexual harrassment have been expanded, along with reported cases, in recent years.

But I am open to being convinced otherwise.

quote:

Originally posted by mrvmax:
FYI here are a few organizations you can support to help stop this

I'd caution you to be very choosy about which anti-trafficking organizations you contribute towards.

There's a lot of money (both grants and donations) in anti-trafficking outreach these days, since it has grabbed the spotlight in recent years and is becoming recognized as a major issue. And as a result, hundreds/thousands of these non-profits are popping up to get their piece of the pie. But many of these organizations don't have the first clue about what they're doing. And some will not cooperate with other similar organizations, instead trying to monopolize on the "trafficking money" in their area. So there's extreme balkanization going on, with all these organization squabbling about territory and money, and often no real unified attempt at working together to help trafficking victims.

In addition, some of these organizations even end up either not cooperating with, or even directly interfering with, law enforcement trafficking investigations, either through inadvertent bumbling because they don't know what they're doing, or because they are purposely anti-law-enforcement-minded.


There's also a lot of false or inflated stats floating around out there from a number of these organizations, who are just using big scary numbers to frighten PTA meetings and church groups into cracking opening their checkbooks to donate towards Saving The Children.


Don't get me wrong... Yes, it's a seriously major problem. And yes, nonprofits are needed to assist with it, since cops can't also be offering mental health counseling, providing shelters, offering family support services, etc. But stuff like I described can be very frustrating, and counterproductive.