End It Now
Sex Trafficking: The illegal business of recruiting, harboring, transporting, obtaining, or providing a person and especially a minor for the purpose of sex.
Sex trafficking is a hard core reality that is hitting many of our neighborhoods and it doesn’t discriminate against or target race, gender, or age, nor does it respect law or moral judgement. The best way to fight it is to educate yourself on the realities of the industry and learn how to educate your child so that they are aware of the manipulation tactics that traffickers will use to recruit them. The traffickers (pimps), target vulnerability and this is something that every child has, vulnerabilities. If you think that your child is too young to be targeted, think again, because the average age a child enters into the industry is 12 – 14 for girls and 11 – 13 for boys. Every year, 150,000 children are recruited nationally into the sex industry. Saint Louis is ranked #16 in the nation for sex trafficking, so the reality of it may be a
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Stripping, pornography, and sexual acts that are performed in exchange for food and shelter are also very detrimental to the sex industry. One of the main myths about sex trafficking is that it is a CHOICE. I can tell you from my own experiences that it IS NOT a choice. The reality is not that a child wakes up one day and says “I think I want to be a prostitute today.” There are many things that can make a child more vulnerable to being recruited by a trafficker, and we will get into some of those later on. Sex trafficking is a universal, structured, and organized crime. A recent study indicated that sex trafficking is a public safety issue that should be addressed at an early age. Traffickers generally target victims based on three factors: vulnerability, local demand, and the risk and cost to