The Lost Youth of America Every day in the United States runaway/throwaway teens are trafficked for commercial sex. Homeless teens are especially vulnerable to sex traffickers. This population uses sex as a survival mechanism, trading sex for shelter and food. Pimps recognize this vulnerability and utilize it to recruit and exploit minors. Teen homelessness is alarmingly high in the United States.
Children are most frequently sexually abused by someone they know, often a member of their own family. Over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by family members. And this include Children have been abused physical, sexual and psychological. Other way is that people adopt children to make work for them, to sell to drug dealers or people who buy children for sex. The sadness thing is that children have been abused especially sexual by their own parents or siblings.
Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation in the United States Human trafficking for sexual exploitation is a major issue across the country. Human trafficking involves an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring or receiving a person through a use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them (U.S. Department of State Diplomacy in Action). Sexual exploitation is the sexual abuse of children and youth through the exchange of sex or sexual acts for drugs, food, shelter, protection, other basics of life, and/or money (U.S. Department of State Diplomacy in Action). Every year, human traffickers generate billions of dollars in profits by victimizing millions of people around the world, and here in the United States. Human trafficking is considered one of the fastest growing criminal industries in the world.
In Hunter’s book, which I will be attaining most of my information, he explains the different areas being affected by this abuse which include physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. As adults they may attempt to find help only to receive misdiagnoses or neglect of the real issue. According to Prevent Child Abuse America approximately one in six boys are sexually abused before the age of sixteen. Also according to the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress among 22.3 million children between the ages of 12 and 17 in the US, 1.8 million had become the prey of sexual offenders. Hunter describes sexual abuse as “any sexual act that an adult does to a child” (Hunter, 1990, p. 3).
Girls on the island were liable to be abused—including being indecently assaulted and subjected to oral sex from the age of about five some even from the age of three. Virtually all the young girls on the island were sexually abused. Records have proven that some of the young women have had their first child by the age of 12. Some were left barren as a result of the injuries they suffered in these assaults. Many of the victims left the island.
Flores describes in details of how her life was turned upside down by a group of Chaldeans boys at her High School with what started out as a innocent crush on a boy named Daniel that leads to her being manipulated and sexually raped. Flores life changed in glimpse of an eye, from one day living in the comfort of her family and friends to another day filled with torture and fear that is involved in business of sex trafficking. Flores was a victim of sex trafficking at the age of 15 years old in upper class suburbs of Detroit. The book describes in gruesome details of how she was forced into sex trafficking, beaten and tortured to do things against her will on the basis of intimidation and threats on her family and loved ones. Daniel a boy she had a crush on in school asked her to take a ride with him and end up taking her to his house.
Sometimes, they are driven to the profession by desperation and a lack of other employment opportunities. Many times, people “exchange sexual services for economic compensation in the form of drugs, money, or needed resources such as housing or food” (Murphy 775). In other cases, they are forced into prostitution by others. For example, in human trafficking, people are enslaved and forced to be prostitutes. Clearly, slavery and forcing someone to do something against their will could be considered immoral.
Less important disabilities include: mental health troubles; unsuitable sexual behavior; disrupted school experience; trouble with the law; detention through incarceration for a crime or inpatient treatment for mental health, or alcohol and drug abuse troubles (Barry, 2008). The confused routine of the addicted mother tends to lend itself to home surroundings containing neglect and poor parental influences. Often times, a woman who abuses drugs throughout pregnancy will mistreatment drugs after the birth of the child. Drug and alcohol abuse through any member of the family can lead to chronic volatility, disharmony, and possible violence such that a child's psychosocial, developmental, behavioral, and learning competencies can become gravely compromised. In addition, substance-using mothers have been found to have less prenatal care were more likely to be hospitalized as a consequence of aggression (Sharon,
There is an epidemic of sexual slavery in countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. This issue has long been recognized as a destructive force in the world, spreading HIV and other diseases around the world at an alarming rate. Women and children are sold into slavery at a very young age (from 4 to 30 years old), often beaten, and forced to perform sexual acts which create irreversible damage in a human being. Many social economic issues such as extreme poverty, corrupt government officials, and lack of infrastructure has rendered these countries vulnerable to the high demand of the escort industry in countries around the world. These problems will be addressed looking through the global lens of power and its influence.
This may lead people to steal and to prostitution as well. Thus, they will be more likely to carry incurable diseases such as AIDS. Moreover, Anderson explains that Oxfam reported that when 30,000 child workers were forced to quit their jobs, they became prostitutes or starved (par.17). Prostitution is a part of a forced labor problem and human trafficking. It will hurt the children not only physically but also psychologically because it makes them feel oppressed and persecuted.