Child sex trafficking is the forced or unforced use of people under the age of eighteen for commercial sex purposes. It affects over 100,000 children in the United States each year, and former President Barack Obama has even called it modern day slavery. Oftentimes children from broken homes and foster care and children that have been abducted are coerced into sex work. Considering the age of legal consent is eighteen, any sexual act engaged between a minor and an adult is statutory rape. Therefore, victimized children are not sex workers, but child slaves. A problem greatly considered beneath America, child sex trafficking is actually one of the largest and most dubious underground economies within the States. While little appears to be done about the thousands of boys and girls locked within the trade, there are multiple ways to help prevent its continuance. On a large scale, legal action should be taken to criminalize perpetrators of child sex trafficking and decriminalize victims. While laws exist against engagement of sexual conduct with minors, whether for profit or not, “only eighteen U.S. states have laws explicitly prohibiting the criminalization of child sex trafficking victims” (Dempsey). In the other thirty-two states, children can be arrested for the sex work they engage in. Since prostitution is illegal, victims can be perceived as criminals in the legal court. This is a major …show more content…
Unfortunately, the abolition of slavery in 1865 did not transfer to underground economies, such as the sex trafficking of children. Unbeknownst to many Americans, hundreds of thousands of children are being manipulated and forced to perform sexual acts for the enjoyment of adults. This perverted, pedophilic crime trade operates with little legal intervention. However, it can be stopped if people lobby, train, and volunteer. Children deserve to maintain their innocence and enjoy the process of maturation. By intervening, America’s youth may grow up the way they are entitled