On this Juneteenth, I am thinking of those who are not yet free. Most of them are girls. Born in America.
Every year in this country, between 100,000 and 300,000 children--most of whom are astonishingly between the ages of 11 to 14 years old-- are sold for sex by pimp-captors, according to government statistics. Suspend disbelief for just a moment while you imagine your fifth-grade child, niece or sister being sold for sex. If you live in a city, imagine that happening within one square mile of where you are right now.
And if you want to know the greatest connector of those children to, by some estimates, millions of Americans ready to purchase a girl for sex, look no further than the best-known online trading post: Craigslist. While most people use the site to buy and sell stuff--cars, clothes and musical instruments--the most active areas of the site are used to buy sex, often with little girls.
Law enforcement officials and anti-trafficking organizations have repeatedly asked Craigslist to rein in its sex ads in an effort to stop the selling of children. Unfortunately, Craigslist's founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster have ignored such pleas--in part because they just made an estimated $36 million in profits from these sex ads in the last year alone. While Craigslist has made selling children a virtual stop-and-shop for predators, it alone doesn't by any means account for the explosion of child trafficking.
Young girls are the new commodities that traffickers and gangs are peddling. They have been allowed to operate in a culture void of crime and punishment for selling girls, largely because the U.S. government annually spends 300 times more money to fight drug trafficking than it does to fight human trafficking. And because the criminal penalties for trafficking cocaine, for example, are 20 times greater than the criminal penalties levied against those who buy and sell girls. As incomprehensible as it seems, today trafficking in girls brings in more profits and spells less prison time than dealing crack. See more at http://www.theroot.com/views/new-middle-passage?GT1=38002