The Sex Trafficking Industry In Patricia Mccormick's Books Like Sold

The sex trafficking industry is a massive, illegal business spanning across the world, which involves taking girls from their lives and making them into human sex objects. Books and articles that are written about this topic are not fiction, they occur all across the world. Books like Sold, by Patricia McCormick, tell the story of girls in the sex trafficking industry in a realistic and factual way. Girls are bought and then required to pay their buyers back by working as sex slaves. These girls are abused mentally, emotionally, and physically if they go against or do not listen to their captors. Not only in the book, but also in the real world, girls are offered fake jobs, marriage, and great sums of money by anyone from people they are

Sold shows the money struggles that many face, which is why so many girls are enticed by the offers for money that they get. In the quote, “Ama wipes her cheek with the hem of her shawl. “Your stepfather has said you must go to the city and earn your keep as a maid,” it is shown that Lakshmi’s stepfather set her up with her “job” and lured her into the sex trafficking industry through the idea of supporting her family (McCormick 53). The ones who offer the jobs to the girls do not even have close to them, as said in the article by Kate Orlinsky, “The sex trafficking starts with the procurers in Nepal, who might be anyone: a stranger with a fake job to offer – or a girl’s own brother in-law” (Orlinsky). These strangers, “spend time persuading young women and girls with promises of marriages, a good life, work, and money,” which is what brings the girls to the decisions that they make (Williams). This idea is also manifested in the article Recruiting Girls from Sex Slavery, where it states, “The trafficking of the girls is done by people who are basically known to the girls, who can lure them from the village by telling them they are getting a nice job. It’s a lucrative business”

The rehabilitation center, written about in Ruffin’s article, brings in girls from brothels and hears their stories. Ruffins mentioned, “Girls from the brothels arrive empty-handed, sick, in many cases pregnant or with small children, and “psychologically broken” (Ruffins). In Sold, when entering Happiness House for the first time, a little girl finds herself scared and overwhelmed. Later, one of the girls went up to Lakshmi and said, “That new girl, the one in your old room. Yesterday morning Mumtaz found her hanging from the rafters” (McCormick 152). The little girl could not take the psychological pressure that was brought upon her, and so she gave her own life to avoid it. This shows that the sex trafficking industry can mentally break people, and the ones who get out alive from the brothels are usually traumatized for the rest of their lives. After finally being freed, “Some girls who are trafficked choose to remain prostitutes for life because their home villages will not accept them” (Ruffins). This is also shown in the book Sold, with Monica not being accepted back to her village after returning. McCormick wrote, “She snorts. “When they heard I was coming,” she says, “they met me outside the village and begged me not to