Sex Trafficking Victim Next Door Analysis

Human trafficking is defined as an illegal transportation of individuals that involves kidnapping, sexual violence, and coercion. In addition, it’s a modern-day form of slavery that violates human rights and can sentence an individual for up to 20 years in prison. There are many forms of human trafficking. Typically, they consist of illegal businesses based on forced labor and sexual slavery. This billion dollar illegal business has affected millions of lives across the globe. Many people, particularly women are victims of human trafficking. Due to fraud advertisements, they have traumatizing and horrific experiences.

In “The Sex-Trafficking Victim Next Door,” Goldie Taylor discusses how in Atlanta, 17 year old Annika became a sex slave.

Following this ordeal, she was no longer profitable for prince and sister. Therefore, she was no longer wanted as their prostitute. Following this event, she finally went home. Currently, Annika has difficulty trusting people and is paranoid whenever she’s out in public. According to the article, human traffickers sold both boys and girls for huge profits. They accumulated $33,000 per week off of the suffering of children (Taylor). In other words, children are profitable and are therefore being kidnapped by adults to be sold for profit. For instance, Annika happens to be one of the victims who was lured by older people and experienced child rape. She was impregnated at the age of 17. She had no money nor did she have an education to support her family. She did not deserve this lifestyle, especially as an adolescent. A second article that discusses human trafficking is “Why do we Lock up survivors of sex trafficking?” by Andrea Powell. In this article, Powell mentions an individual by the name of Macy who was a victim of human trafficking. At the age of 17, she was abandoned by her parents and sent to foster care. Later on, she was acquainted with an older man who promised her love and shelter. She was instantly infatuated and believed every word he said. This led to her leaving her home staying with this older gentleman. However, her expectations for this man were betrayed

However, she refused to do it and as a result, she was brutally beaten and raped countless times. Macy was forced to have sex with men countless times across countries. She was traumatized and her emotions were unstable for many months.Eventually, she was rescued by the police in Washington D.C. Turns out, the authorities claimed that she was involved in sex trafficking and was threatened to be put in prison if she doesn’t testify against her trafficker. Powell provided examples on how Macy experienced mistreatments and defined it as sex trafficking. Examples include physical violence such as strangling and statutory rape (Powell). Clearly, Powell’s definition of sex trafficking is a victim subject to rape and mistreatment similar to Macy’s status. This entails that Macy feels threatened and scared even when she’s safe with the