"Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day."-John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
© East Texas Review
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.
This is an industry that revolves around cheap sex on the fly, with young girls and women who are
sold to 50 men each day for $25 apiece, while their
handlers make $150,000 to $200,000 per child each year.
This is not a problem found only in big cities.
It's happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities and towns across the nation.
Comment: Is anyone surprised this really-poorly-thought-out business model failed? It's hard to see how anyone would think it's a good idea to alienate half of their potential customer base. The 'Get Woke, Go Broke' trend continues.
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