ATROCITIES OF MODERN SLAVERY

To see a video related to this article click here

WE ARE A SICK SOCIETY

Consider this: every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry. Children, some as young as 8 or 9 years old, or younger – are being bought and sold for sex worldwide. Reread and let that statement soak in! We are a sick society!

EVIL TRADE

Sex trafficking of young girls is an evil trade that is even more profitable than drugs, and that is conducted by organized crime, corrupt politicians and even used to finance terrorist operations in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world. Governments, politicians and corrupt police either turn a blind eye to it, or, in many instances, run interference for and participate in the profits from this abominable sex industry. The selling of these human beings is a multi-billion dollar industry, which has increased from approximately $7 Billion per year in 2000, to now approximately $150 Billion every year (www.FreetheSlaves.net). Many thinking people are aware of this sex trade but there are very few who are willing to speak out against it or fight back to rescue these girls.

SLAVERY IS ALIVE AND THRIVING IN OUR SOCIETY

Researchers estimate that there are 40.3 million people enslaved in the world today (International Labour Organisation). In Africa, over two million people are trafficked annually and of this number there is an estimated 30 000 children as young as 4, who are being prostituted currently in South Africa (National Centre for Justice and Rule of Law). It is estimated that there are millions of victims; though only about 50-100,000 cases are found or reported each year in South Africa. The University of Johannesburg reports that trafficking occurs at a slightly higher rate for girls than boys, with 55% of all trafficked people in South Africa being female and 45% being male. It is estimated that more than three quarters of all victims are between the ages of 12-25. Counter Trafficking Data Portal looked into 286 accounts of trafficking in South Africa, 70% of the cases were females; and 55% of the cases were people being trafficked for sexual exploitation, with the remaining percentages being exploited for other trafficking purposes such as organ harvesting or forced labour.

UNDER OUR NOSES

Child sex tourism is prevalent in and between a number of South African cities, notably Johannesburg and Cape Town. Women and girls from other African countries are often imported to South Africa for commercial sexual exploitation, domestic servitude and other jobs in the service sector. Occasionally, these women are taken as far as Europe for sexual exploitation. Many Thai, Chinese, and European women are often trafficked to and sexually exploited in South Africa. Organized criminal groups, syndicates, local gangs and individual policemen facilitate trafficking into, out of and within South Africa, particularly for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. Trafficking rings choose transit locations where government officials and police are corrupt, leaving traffickers with little risk of being caught and victims with little hope of being helped.

THE MOST LUCRATIVE COMMODITY: LITTLE GIRLS

Sex trafficking – especially when it comes to the buying and selling of young girls – has become big business – the fastest growing business in organized crime and these enslaved people have become the most lucrative commodity traded illegally – even more so than drugs and guns. As investigative journalist Amy Fine Collins notes, “It’s become more lucrative and much safer [for the traffickers] to sell malleable teens than drugs or guns.” Also, “A pound of heroin or an AK-47 can be retailed once, but a young girl can be sold 10 to 15 times [or more] a day.” On average, a girl might be raped by 6,000 males during a five-year period of enslavement. Brook Bello, the founder of the anti-trafficking organization More To Life, states, “We work with victims that are 3 years old and up… The average victim that we work with that’s over 18 started being raped at three.”

BUYING AND SELLING CHILDREN FOR SEX

According to USA Today, adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States alone. Who buys a child for sex? Sadly, the answer is otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life. “They could be your co-worker, a businessman, doctor, pastor, or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America. And we cannot look only to America with disgust, as this is happening right under our own noses in South Africa too. This is an industry that revolves around cheap sex on the fly, with young girls and women who are sold to up to several dozen men EACH DAY.

WORLDWIDE EPIDEMIC

This is not a problem found only in major cities or poverty stricken third world countries. It’s happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities and towns across the globe. Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children points out, “The only way not to find this in any city is simply not to look for it.” Don’t fool yourselves into believing that this is merely a concern for lower income communities or immigrants. Most girls aren’t volunteering to be sex slaves. They’re being lured – forced – trafficked into it.

HEART OF THE PROBLEM

But let’s look at the heart of the problem, human trafficking is thriving due to simple economics: Supply and demand. A sick and perverse society is driving the demand. The evil and widespread sex trafficking industry is fueled by an unceasing demand. Because the demand is so great, traffickers are filling that demand with an increased supply of forced sex workers. They are filling that demand with our children.

PROTECTING PIMPS AND WHOREMONGERS

And what’s horrifying, is often those fueling the demand, those sick abusers of children, are protected. One investigator in an interview with Fox News pointed this out when he said, “Historically, we've allowed the sex buyer to hide behind a mask of anonymity and actually call them a ‘John’.” “We don't even call them by their name, because we let them stay behind that mask of anonymity. And the only way we're going to attack the supply side is by going after the demand. And that means the sex buyer [also] needs to be held culpable for the damage and trauma that he or she is causing to these children.”

OVER-SEXUALISED SOCIETY GROOMING GIRLS FOR EXPLOITATION

A 25-year-old victim of trafficking, after being rescued stated, “For every 10 women rescued, there are 50 to 100 more girls who are brought in by the traffickers. Unfortunately, they’re not 18 or 20-year-olds anymore,” she says, “They’re minors as young as 13 who are being trafficked. They’re little girls.” I ask you: Where did this sick appetite for young girls come from? Look around you. Young girls have been sexualized for years now in music videos, on billboards, in television ads, and in clothing stores. Marketers have created a demand for young flesh and a ready supply of over-sexualized children. Jessica Bennett from Newsweek points out, “All it takes is one look at [social media] photos of teens to see examples – if they aren’t imitating porn they’ve actually seen, they’re imitating the porn-inspired images and poses they’ve absorbed elsewhere…Latex, corsets, and stripper heels, once the fashion of porn stars, have made their way into middle and high schools. It doesn’t take a genius to see that sex, if not porn, has invaded our lives. Whether we welcome it or not, television brings it into our living rooms and the Web brings it into our bedrooms. According to a 2007 study from the University of Alberta, as many as 90 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls aged 13 to 14 have accessed sexually explicit content (porn) at least once.” Many view it regularly! In other words, the culture is grooming these young people to be preyed upon by sexual predators. And then we wonder why our young women are being preyed on, trafficked and abused? Don McAlvany of McAlvany Intelligence Advisor comments, “And sadly, there are large numbers of revolting [males] who are so sick that they want to have sex with a young girl [or young boy].”

PORNOGRAPHY FUELS PROSTITUTION AND PERVERSION

Pornography is causing greater and more bizarre sex addictions. Agents at the Cyber Crimes Center in Virginia, report that when it comes to sex, the appetites have now changed. What was once considered abnormal is now the norm. These agents are tracking a clear spike in the demand for harder-core pornography on the Internet and subsequently for brutal sex. As one agent noted, “We’ve become desensitized by the soft stuff; now we need a harder and harder hit.” Just like any other addiction, you need more increased and intense doses. A study of the life and final confessions of serial rapist and killer, Ted Bundy, who sexually brutalized and murdered 43 women, reveals that it all started with pornography and escalated to more and more wild and violent sexual atrocities. Sadly, dark spiritual forces have achieved incredible control over nearly every institution in modern society, including the news media, public education, the tech giants, politics, pop culture, banking, and finance and is having a phenomenal impact on society. Now not only is sexual violence being glamourized in Hollywood films, but it is happening on a mass scale in reality all around us.

HORRIFYING TESTIMONIES

With a growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of girls and women who can be targeted for abduction, this is not a problem that’s going away anytime soon. For those trafficked, it’s a nightmare from beginning to end. Those being sold for sex have an average life expectancy of seven years and those years are a living nightmare of endless rape, forced drugging, humiliation, degradation, disease, pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages, torture, pain and always the constant fear of being killed, or having those you love hurt or killed. A common thread woven through most survivors’ experiences is being forced to go without sleep or food until they have met their “sex quota” of at least 40 men. Barbara Amaya was repeatedly sold between traffickers, abused, shot, stabbed, raped, kidnapped, trafficked, beaten, and jailed – all before she was 18 years old! “I had a quota that I was supposed to fill every night. And if I didn’t have that amount of money, I would get beaten, thrown down the stairs. He beat me once with wire coat hangers, the kind you hang up clothes on, he straightened it out and my whole back was bleeding.”

TRICKED – TRAPPED – TRAFFICKED

Debbie, a straight-A student who belonged to a close-knit Air Force family, is an example of this trading of flesh. Debbie was 15 when she was snatched from her driveway by an acquaintance-friend. Forced into a car, Debbie was bound and taken to an unknown location, held at gunpoint, and raped by multiple men. She was then crammed into a small dog kennel and forced to eat dog biscuits. Debbie’s captors advertised her services on Craigslist. Those who responded were often married with children! And the money that Debbie “earned” for sex was given to her kidnappers. The gang raping continued. After searching the apartment where Debbie was held captive, police finally found Debbie stuffed in a drawer under a bed.

Holly Austin Smith was abducted when she was 14 years old, raped and then forced to prostitute herself. Her pimp, when brought to trial, was only made to serve a year in prison. He should have been executed!

THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR

One woman recounts how her trafficker made her lie face down on the floor when she was pregnant and then literally jumped on her back, forcing her to miscarry. Peter Landesman paints the full horrors of life for those victims of the sex trade in his New York Times article “The Girls Next Door”, he writes, “Andrea told me that she and the other children she was held with were frequently beaten to keep them off balance and obedient. Sometimes they were videotaped while being forced to have sex with adults or one another. Her cell of sex traffickers offered three age ranges of sex partners – toddler to age 4, 5-12, and teens – as well as what she called a ‘damage group.’ ‘In the damage group, they can hit you or do anything they want to,’ she explained. ‘Though, sex always hurts when you are little, so it’s always violent, everything was much more painful once you were placed in the damage group.’”

I ask you again, how do you define a sick, grotesquely perverse and dying culture?

And this growing evil is, for all intents and purposes, out in the open. Trafficked women and children are advertised on the Internet, transported on our freeways, and bought and sold on our streets. Our culture is off-the-charts evil. But does anyone care? Does this make you angry?

THE FARCE

The truth is that the government’s war on sex trafficking, like the war on drugs, or the war on terrorism, is a farce. Drugs, terrorism and sex trafficking are about huge money and certain politicians and high-up influential people are profiting from all of these fake wars. If the government wanted to stop this sex trafficking, it could. But it doesn’t! They could pass laws making sex trafficking a capital offense – or at least punishable by life imprisonment. But they won’t – in part because some powerful people are actually participants (i.e., customers) in this evil sexual abuse of little girls.

DEFENSE

So, what can you do? Firstly look out for your own children and family members. Educate yourself and your children about this growing evil. Watch your children closely in public – even in big shopping centers, churches, or other public places. Watch closely what they are doing on social media – this is where many innocent and naïve young girls are being recruited. Eliminate or limit social media from your home, but explain to your children why so that they understand and don’t just keep doing it secretly. These are all precautionary defensive strategies. And ultimately, stop feeding the monster: Sex trafficking is part of a larger spectrum that includes sexualized television, the glorification of sexual culture and a multi-billion-dollar sex industry encompassing pornography, music, movies, entertainment, etc.

THE PORNOGRAPHY PLAGUE

There are an estimated 4 million porn sites on the Internet, all of them only a click away on your child’s cellphone, tablet, laptop. We have to educate our children on this, as sadly it is no longer will our child know how to respond IF they come across porn, but rather WHEN they come across it. In fact, Dr. Eve’s curriculum, Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), is in many overseas schools and is now trying to be brought to South Africa, where children as young as grade 4, are taught how to masturbate! They are exposed to pornography as “entertainment” and they are taught they can be whatever gender they feel like! It is a radical explicit sexualisation of children. The UN and Unesco promote this, to children as young as 6 years old, teaching them things such as anal sex is normal and good, and they should start exploring there sexuality. They are trying to make this curriculum compulsory. But parents should be able to choose who teaches their children about the sanctity of sex, at what age, with sensitivity and Biblically, but the state is trying to take the right to make these decisions away from parents.

OFFENSE
This epidemic is largely one of our own making, especially in a corporate age where the value placed on human life takes a backseat to profit. It is estimated that the porn industry brings in more money than tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, or Yahoo. Call on your city councils, elected officials and police departments to make the battle against sex trafficking a top priority, more so even than the so-called war on terror and drugs. Focus on prosecuting the pimps AND buyers (customers/perverts/rapists) who victimize these young girls. It’s not just the supply that’s the problem, but the demand too. Legislators need to pass legislation aimed at prosecuting traffickers and abusers, the sick people who drive the demand for sex slaves. They need to be prosecuted with long prison sentences. Hotels need to stop enabling these traffickers by providing them with rooms and cover for their dirty deeds. Consider how you would feel about these reprobates if your own daughter was a victim. We need to turn off Hollywood. We need to restore basic principles of morality and ethics to our schools, our town halls, and our families. Only then may we seek the mercy of God and pray for forgiveness for the tens of millions of children already exploited or murdered. We need to pray for forgiveness for the evil WE have passively allowed to take root and grow in our nation – in the name of “progress” and “tolerance.”

BOTTOM LINE

The bottom-line, that so many women and children continue to be victimized, brutalized, and treated like human cargo is due to four factors: 1) A sex crazed, sick culture that is addicted to pornography – where large numbers of perverse people are eager to have sex with little girls or boys (i.e., pedophilia); 2) Sex trafficking is very profitable – even more-so than drugs (a multi-billion dollar, flourishing industry); 3) A level of corruption so massive on both a local and international scale that there is little hope of working through government channels for change; and 4) An eerie silence from individuals. Most people either don’t know, or just don’t care.

THE GUILTY

And so the truth is that we are all guilty of contributing to this human suffering. The traffickers are guilty. The sick male customers who want to have sex with little girls are guilty. The corrupt law enforcement and government officials who ignore the trafficking or are actually profiting from it are guilty. The women’s rights groups who do nothing are guilty. The foreign peacekeepers, aid workers and military personnel who contribute to the demand for sex slaves are guilty. And every individual who does not raise an objection to the atrocities being committed against trafficked children in almost every nation around the globe is guilty. And everyone who is voting for political parties that legalize pornography and essentially prostitution are guilty. As Edmund Burke said: “All that is necessary that evil triumph is that good men (and women) do nothing.” “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” Ephesians 5:11

We are all guilty, but we serve a God who is gracious and merciful, and even though we are underserving, God says, “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14. Let’s humble ourselves, let’s confess our sin, let’s pray, let’s seek God’s face, let’s be renewed in our minds by meditating on His Word – Then God is faithful and just and He will forgive us and heal us. Let’s do this today.

BE THE SOLUTION

Thankfully, there are some voices now rising against this evil. But ask yourself: are you angry, or more accurately, enraged, at this growing evil and the evil described above? Are you, your church, your pastor, your friends, your family members speaking out against it? If not, why not? Is our silence a result of ignorance or cowardice? Now that you know, do not stay silent, remaining part of the problem. “Who will rise up for Me against the wicked? Who will stand for Me against those who practice iniquity?” Psalm 94:16

PROBLEM OF THE HEART
The major underlying reason for this great evil is the collapsing of culture, morality and spiritual life – an evil culture that is now being spread all over the world – a culture where most people can no longer even recognize great evil – let alone fight back against it. Earlier generations would never have tolerated pornography available on every computer and cell phone; or the death of marriage and family that we now see – nor would they have tolerated a sex industry that is turning hundreds of thousands of young girls into sex slaves. We are reaping what we have sown. We must stop the wicked from exploiting, abusing, mutilating, and murdering innocent children, because they are all God’s creatures. Will we ever stop being passive? Will we ever get angry as a people and say: “This is enough! This will go no further!” Will we ever fight back?

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.” Proverbs 31:8

By Emma Vaughan-Jones

Henry Morton Stanley School of Christian Journalism Researcher

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Sources: The information in this article is taken largely from a McAlvany Intelligence Advisor’s article written by Don McAlvany.

To listen to an interview on this subject on From the Frontline, click here.

Women’s Day Anti-Trafficking Campaign