'Sexual slavery' of children escalates on Web, House panel told

[alp227]

Source: CNN

Washington (CNN) -- Child sex trafficking, abetted by internet technology, is a growing scourge of American society -- at least 100,000 teenagers are believed to be lured into prostitution and "sexual slavery" each year -- a House committee heard Wednesday.

The House Judiciary Committee held the hearing on domestic minor sex trafficking to draw attention to the issue and raise questions about how to tackle it.

"Sex trafficking is the slavery of the 21st century," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York, noting human trade is the third-largest global criminal enterprise, behind drug and gun trafficking.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/09/15/us.child.sex.trafficking/index.html

[CoffeeCat]

1. I read these articles...

...and I want to drive around, find these girls and scoop them off the streets and get them safe.

The sad thing is--by now, they probably wouldn't be able to function in a normal family environment.

They all most likely have PTSD by now. If the family from which they hail was worse than life on
the streets as a sex slave...we can only imagine.

So sad. :cry:

[Cronus Protagonist]

2. Aren't they also abetted by the invention of the automobile?

And also by the invention of the telephone, the camera, the cell phone, the public transportation system and a host of other things...In other words, why does the author single out the Internet?

[Kelvin Mace]

5. And the invention of paper

pencils, writing, math, paper money, etc.

I get so fucking sick of people blaming everything on the internet.

[LanternWaste]

8. Possibly because it's the newest tool

Possibly because it's the newest tool to be used effectively and on such a large scale, as was the telephone before that, and the camera before that, etc.

[boppers]

22. It's a tool invented after much of the current government was born.

To our legislators, it's "new", and they're still trying to understand it.

[mrcheerful]

3. I am not convinced that it is as big of a problem as this article suggests

as at the very end this caught my attention.........."The small number of reports makes it difficult to get a sense of the true scope of the problem," Allen said. "We've seen lots of ads where there is obviously a young person in the ad. Now is she 18 or 17? Is she 22 or 12?"
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Remember not to long ago there was an attempt to make midget porn and any actor who didn't "look" over 18 illegal. Btw, shows like To Catch A Predator also showed just how easy it was for police agencies to entrap predators in under age sex stings. Predators saw these programs which also made them aware that the internet was not a safe place to cruise for under age sex.

Edited to fix an error I had 1 instead of 12

[Kelvin Mace]

4. If the police would stop wasting their time

with drug cases, they could wipe the "scourge" of "child sex trafficking" in about a year. The problem is NOT the internet, the problem is law enforcement priorities.

Ask ANYONE which problem they'd like to see the police concentrate on given limited resources and damned few would say drugs.

[Uncle Joe]

7. I agree, they could be far more effective against crimes of violence in general; murder, rape,

kidnapping and child sex trafficking.

This is just another side effect of wasting precious energy, time and resources on what should be an educational, medical and person privacy issue.

[Proletariatprincess]

10. You make entirely too much sense, Uncle Joe....

but the fact is, that drug enforcement is entirely corrupt and therefore highly profitable for the drug warriors. There is no profit to be made in preventing sex trafficking.

[Kelvin Mace]

19. The Princess is right

The police have become thoroughly corrupted by the "drug wars".

There is LOTS of LEGAL ways to make money on the drug wars, and the police are not going to give them up.

http://www.theredmountainpost.com/economist-blog-how-the-police-can-seize-your-stuff-4893/

[TheMadMonk]

13. Fuck that. It's how they save themselves time in these cases that sickens me.

Charge the girls as prostitutes, get them into the system as criminals and avoid the big headache of dealing with them as victims.

It probably doesn't hurt (corruption wise) to damage the girl's credibility by labeling them as crims either.

[Kelvin Mace]

18. Oh you touch on a VERY painful

spot for me.

I'll PM you.

[SpeechlessDem]

6. I don't believe it@

I think this is just fear mongering so that govt. takes control over the internet!

that's all this is, I do not believe it!

[mitchum]

20. And I agree with you

[Downwinder]

9. How many of those ads are Law Enforcement sting operations? n/t

[truthisfreedom]

11. If this is for real, it's horrifying. How on earth does it work? How do you hide such activity

online?

[Xithras]

16. There are 234 million websites on the Internet.

Each of those websites contains dozens, sometimes hundreds, and occasionally millions of webpages. Any one of those could contain a child sex ad.

So your answer is that they "hide" their activity in plain site. The Internet is so large that they can advertise their crimes with impunity, knowing that the odds of their local police department stumbling across the ad is nearly zero.

Keep in mind that, if a cop in Cleveland stumbles across a child sex ad for an underage prostitute in Portland Oregon, there is little that the police officer in Cleveland can do other than call the Portland PD and let them know. They hand the tip over to their investigators who have to confirm the tip, and they might be able to put a sting together in a day or two...by which time the underage prostitute has usually moved on to a different city (yes, they "tour"...that's where the "traffiking" comes in).

[bemildred]

12. Poverty sucks. nt

[Nikki Stone1]

14. Just in time for the argument about net neutrality

Sex trafficking IS slavery and it has been going on for a very long time. Because it tends to involve women and children only, it is not considered real slavery and no government is willing to really clean house. After all, high level males benefit from this in ways we can't even imagine.

[boppers]

23. Net Neutrality? Interesting to bring that up.

If all content is to be treated equally, then sex trafficking content should not be stifled?

[Xithras]

15. Prostitution is the oldest profession. Child prostitution is the oldest crime.

We'll never totally eliminate it, but we have to continue to chase these sick fucks into whatever shadows they're hiding behind. I'm open minded when it comes to people voluntarily engaging in the sex trade, but when it comes to prostituting children...well, my mind conjures up images that involve dull knives and ball peen hammers.

[jkappy]

17. Youmean man's "oldest oppression." n/t

[chrisa]

21. The internet makes it easier for them. (+Insane or not. What do you think?)

The people that kidnap them aren't sick in the head, imo. They're cool and calculating. They know how to trick kids into getting in their grasp. They want the payoff of money / whatever, and could care less about their victims.

Then, of course, there's the customers, which I don't know how to describe. I don't think "evil," in the literal sense of the term exists. Calling them psychotic or sick means that they're a slave to their mental disease (or didn't have a choice), which they're not. Calling them sociopaths mind be closer, but again it might make it seem like they had less of a responsibility for their actions. I guess I can just call them people that are a special kind of bad. They're the dark side of humanity.

(But what puzzles me is that raping a child isn't a normal desire to have. Are they insane? No idea.)