ABOUT SEX TRAFFICKING

What is Sex Trafficking?

Somewhere in the world, a girl is being forced to have sex for money – money that will go into someone else's pocket.

She might have been kidnapped from Nepal and enslaved in a Bombay brothel. She could be a Thai girl, sold by her parents to a trafficker who has taken her to a wealthy Japanese client. Or perhaps she was lured from a mall in the Midwest to New York by the promise of a modeling career, only to find herself working the streets under the watchful eye of an armed pimp.

In Asia alone, more than one million women are sold into prostitution each year. While sex trafficking is most recognized in Asia and other countries where women traditionally have had a lesser status, the sex trade is also a growing, profitable business in North America. According to the Christian Science Monitor, both boys and girls are moved by procurers along a "pipeline" that runs from Vancouver to the West Coast and then to Honolulu.

From: Forced Labor: The Prostitution of Children, U.S. Dept. of Labor, 1996. "A Non-Governmental Organization Perspective", pg 63-71.
 
How does it happen?

In some countries, poor families will sell a daughter to a trafficker or a pimp, who either buys the girl outright or provides a loan called a "debt bond" to the family that the girl must then pay off through prostitution. It usually takes years for the girl to earn enough money to buy her freedom, and by then, she may be infected with AIDS or another disease.

In some cases, a trafficking agent may promise a girl a good job in another country. When she arrives, her passport is taken, and she is forced to work as a prostitute. Other girls may simply be kidnaped and taken to another country. One reason that foreign females are targeted is that the demand for prostitutes in a country may be greater than the number of domestic women who are willing to be prostitutes. It is also much more difficult for an enslaved girl to escape in a country where the language and area are foreign. Even if she does escape, she cannot return home because of the social stigma and questions of citizenship. Without documentation, she is considered stateless.

The proliferation of sex trafficking is encouraged by the growing demands of the sex industry in both the East and West. For example, Western men pay for "sex tours" in countries where they will be provided with young girls. Unfortunately, the spread of AIDS has not discouraged the sex industry's growth – instead, it has led traffickers to seek even younger girls, who are more likely to be disease-free.

Many of these girls will never escape. Some will die of AIDS and other communicable diseases, some will resort to suicide.

Officially, CD defines sex trafficking as all acts involved in the recruitment and/or transport of a person within and across national borders to gratify the sexual desires of others. Sex trafficking is accomplished by means of direct or indirect violence or threat of violence, abuse of authority or dominant position, debt-bondage, deception, or other forms of coercion. Additionally, Captive Daughters defines "child" as anyone below the age of 18, in keeping with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

What is Captive Daughters doing?