Human Life, a Priceless Gift: Human Trafficking
Anna was twelve; Ashleigh was fifteen; Janie was seventeen. These are three different girls with the same story. All three of them are girls who had been victims of human trafficking, an industry that earns $32 billion yearly (Baldas). “He brought me to this kind of apartment warehouse with a lot of young girls there. Then [he] locked me in a room with no food or water,” writes Anna after the traumatizing experience (“Voices of the Victims”). Anna is now free of those horrid conditions. Unfortunately, there are thousands of other women and children in the United States who, through human trafficking, are being denied their human rights.
By definition, human trafficking is “the recruitment and
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Traffickers target girls who seem to be alone or vulnerable in some sort of way, for example, girls with depression or girls in poverty. In most cases, the traffickers convince the victims to come leave their homes and come with them by making false promises or by using threats. As soon as the potential victim decides to leave their home, they isolate themselves from possible rescue from family and friends and put themselves in a helpless position that will make the job of the trafficker easier. There are three main forms of human trafficking that are thriving in the United States. There is slave labor, where traffickers will usually use violence, threats, debt bondage, and other cruel methods to imprison the workers (Sunny). Along with this comes domestic servitude, the “seemingly normal practice of live-in help that is used as cover for the exploitation and control of someone” (“Domestic Servitude”). Sex trade is possibly the most recognizable of these three. Just like slave labor, the sex traffickers often use violence and threats, but they also paint images of a steady job, better education, or another deception to lure the victim out of their safe environment (“2. How do Traffickers Recruit Their