"Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day."-John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
© The Pinsta
They're called the Little Barbies.
Children, young girls-some as young as 9 years old-are being bought and sold for sex in America. The average age for a young woman being sold for sex is now 13 years old.
This is America's dirty little secret.
Sex trafficking-especially when it comes to the buying and selling of young girls-has become big business in America, the
fastest growing business in organized crime and the
second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns.
As investigative journalist Amy Fine Collins notes, "It's become
more lucrative and much safer to sell malleable teens than drugs or guns. A pound of heroin or an AK-47 can be retailed once,
but a young girl can be sold 10 to 15 times a day-and a 'righteous' pimp confiscates 100 percent of her earnings."
Consider this:
every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry.
According to
USA Today,
adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.
Who buys a child for sex?
Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life.
"
They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse," writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.
In Georgia alone, it is estimated that
7,200 men (half of them in their 30s) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month, averaging roughly 300 a day.
On average, a child might be
raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period of servitude.
It is estimated that
at least 100,000 children-girls and boys-are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.
"Human trafficking-the commercial sexual exploitation of American children and women, via the Internet, strip clubs, escort services, or street prostitution-is on its way to becoming
one of the worst crimes in the U.S.," said prosecutor Krishna Patel.
Comment: American troops are leaving Iraq for Afghanistan as part of an agreement between Baghdad and the US-led coalition, contractors told AP. Sixty percent of troops will eventually be withdrawn, according to an Iraqi official. Update (Feb. 6): Iraqi Popular Forces Give Last Ultimatum to US Army