January has been declared National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. It’s timely that the seriousness of this issue is being recognized, as it is not only a global crisis but a growing problem here at home.

Thankfully, the mainstream media are picking up on the crisis of human trafficking in the U.S., which FRC highlighted in two events last year. In a gripping new report, Fox News states that “with increasing technology and the Internet, human trafficking has become more accessible and more anonymous.” Even the normally business-focused Forbes Magazine is informing its readers about “How To End Sex Trafficking and Human Slavery.”

As Fox reporter Elizabeth Prann notes, “Experts say, across the globe, millions of people are trafficked each year. Hundreds of thousands of the victims are women and girls. But what surprises many — is the rate it is happening in affluent neighborhoods where minors are being turned into sex slaves.”

According to Rob McKenna, Attorney General of Washington State and current president of the National Association of Attorneys General, “Human trafficking is a $32 billion global industry, the fastest growing and second largest criminal activity in the world, tied with arms and after drug dealing … I urge all Americans to educate themselves about all forms of modern slavery and the signs and consequences of human trafficking. Together, we will combat this crime within our borders and join with our partners around the world to end it.”

The problem is grave and the harm it inflicts so painful it is difficult to describe. However, there is good news – the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability lists 31 Evangelical ministries that seek to help girls and women enmeshed in the sex trade, and Catholic Charities has launched a major project to restore the victims of this horrible practice to well-being. You can link to both sites by visiting FRC’s RealCompassion.org web site.

Continue reading »

Comments: - |

I went to theological seminary in Portland, Oregon.  That might sound rather ensconced and safe, but I worked at a large commercial bakery in a run-down industrial section of the city.  This exposed me to some things I would rather have not seen, as when, driving along a side-street one evening, I found myself running a narrow gauntlet of hectoring prostitutes; I drove away as fast as I could.

Portland has a justified reputation for urban renewal and natural beauty.  Bisected by the Willamette River and set among lush, fir-laden hills, Portland’s charm is hard to forget.

Yet now, as Katelyn Beaty documents in her moving article about the sex trafficking trade in the City of Roses (that would be Portland; I proposed to my wife in the city’s massive rose-test garden, albeit in the winter when none were in bloom), Portland has become perhaps the single most dominant city in one of the ugliest “industries” ever devised – the trafficking of persons for sexual purposes.  Veteran journalist Dan Rather has called Portland “Pornland,” and according to Joslyn Baker of the Multnomah County (Portland area) unit that specializes in child prostitution,  “most Portlanders accepted the ubiquitous strip clubs as part of their premium on individual freedom—until February 2009, when the FBI swept the Portland-Vancouver area and found seven underage girls, the most in any FBI raid at the time. With the ensuing national media coverage, Portlanders began realizing that their lucrative sex industry is the main ‘gateway’ for pimping children.”

Christians are fighting back, with love and tenacity.  They have now started the Oregon Center for Christian Voices (OCCV), which over the past four years “has … become Oregon’s flagship nonprofit for passing laws that make it harder to sexually exploit children. In the same four years, two Christians in Portland’s leading assault advocacy group and police department have created a unique model for assisting underage victims. Their model earned their county a $500,000 federal grant that created a special committee on CSEC (‘commercial sexual exploitation of children’).”  Additionally, Oregon State Legislator Andy Olson (R-Albany) “has worked with OCCV to try to amend Oregon’s Constitution (whose free speech provisions open the door for prostitution and illicit sexuality among youth). A Christian, he calls trafficking a ‘family values issue.’”

Rep. Olson is dead right, and the noble efforts of committed Christians to change Portland’s culture of prostitution and sex trafficking are animated by the same spirit of sacrifice and compassion that led the early believers to rescue unwanted babies from the Roman ash-heaps.  As Shoshan Tama-Sweet, executive director of the Oregon Center for Christian Voices, told journalist Beaty: “The church has something special: We have the Good News.  We have a vision of the way the world is supposed to be. And it doesn’t include the rape of children on our streets.  When you realize that God loved every victim when they were born, that he’s with them every day they’re traumatized—it’s incumbent on believers to protect them, to help them become whole, and to insist that, in our society, we are not going to tolerate the antithesis of God’s beloved community.”

I believe Mr. Tama-Sweet is among those Jesus is unashamed to call brothers (Hebrews 2:11).  May God bless him and his colleagues in their efforts.

Earlier this year, FRC held two events focusing on human trafficking and what Christians can do to fight it.  You can view them here and here.

Comments: 2 |

In an address to the U.N. General Assembly President Bush said:

“Each year, an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 human beings are bought, sold or forced across the world’s borders. Among them are hundreds of thousands of teenage girls, and others as young as five, who fall victim to the sex trade.  This commerce in human life generates billions of dollars each year — much of which is used to finance organized crime.  There’s a special evil in the abuse and exploitation of the most innocent and vulnerable. The victims of sex trade see little of life before they see the very worst of life, an underground of brutality and lonely fear. Those who create these victims and profit from their suffering must be severely punished. Those who patronize this industry debase themselves and deepen the misery of others.  And governments that tolerate this trade are tolerating a form of slavery.”

This tragic form of slavery is not just a problem “over there,” in third world countries far removed from us.  On the contrary, it is happening right in our own backyard.  Despite laws criminalizing it, sex trafficking is a huge problem in America.

In The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America’s Prostituted Children, Shared Hope International affirms that at least 100,000 American children a year are victims of sex trafficking, and that number may be much higher.  The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) highlights the fact that sex trafficking of children is largely under-reported in their estimate that 1 in 5 girls are sexually abused or assaulted before they become adults and 1 in 10 boys, however less than 35% of those cases are reported.  Researchers estimate that 10–15 percent of children living on the streets in the United States are trafficked for sexual purposes according to the National Institute of Justice in their report Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children: What Do We Know and What Do We Do About It?.

Continue reading »

Comments: - |

On Tuesday, March 15, Family Research Council will Webcast a gripping presentation, hosted by FRC President Tony Perkins, titled “Sex Trafficking in America: From the Boulevard to Planned Parenthood“.

Tony will be joined by leading experts to discuss this growing scourge and what concerned citizens can do to stop it. Included will be:

• J. Robert (Bob) Flores, former Administrator of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJD)
• Tina Frundt, founder and executive director of Courtney’s House, which provides specialized housing for sex-trafficked girls
• Lila Rose, Live Action
• Lisa Thompson, Liaison for the Abolition of Sexual Trafficking at the Salvation Army
• Pat Trueman, president, PornHarms.com and former Chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Criminal Division, U. S. Department of Justice
• Samantha Vardaman, senior director, Shared Hope International

You can register to watch this live Webcast by going to http://www.frc.org/traffic

As recently shown by Live Action, Planned Parenthood has been willing to provide sexually-trafficked girls and women not only with contraception but even abortion, without reporting the plight of the victims to law enforcement authorities.

This is only one aspect of the problem. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as many as 17,500 people — the overwhelming majority of them young women and girls — are “trafficked” as sexual slaves in the United States annually.

That number well could be low. As cited in the text of the federal “Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005,” a study “issued by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in 2001 (found that) as many as 300,000 children in the United States are at risk for commercial sexual exploitation, including trafficking, at any given time.”

What is not in dispute is the horror undergone by the victims of this abominable trade — nor that it strikes very close to home. Just a few miles outside of the nation’s capital, 42 year-old Derwin Smith of Glen Burnie, Maryland, a few days ago pleaded guilty to prostituting a 12 year-old girl he had “picked up on the street.” This girl was raped repeatedly by many men while held by Smith, who now faces the possibility of life in prison without parole. U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake will announce his sentence on May 11.

Many of the victims of sex trafficking are trapped in run-down brothels or cheap hotels. Some are found in so-called “health spas” or massage parlors. Of course, many others are simply thrust onto the street, and others are used in child pornography. All are sexually and physically abused and carry deep psychological scars.

If you have observed a young woman or girl in a situation that suggests she is involved in prostitution or pornography, or even that she simply is in need of help, call the 24/7, toll-free Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline at 1-888-373-7888.

This coming Tuesday, be sure to watch “Sex Trafficking in America: From the Boulevard to Planned Parenthood” and let your friends know about this important broadcast.

Comments: 1 |