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Quick Background on Child Trafficking
Child trafficking can take many different forms, but quite simply, they are all child slavery—and there are more people enslaved today than at any other point in history. Statistics vary due to the clandestine nature of this crime, but it is estimated that there are between 4 million and 27 million trafficking victims worldwide. More than half of these are children, and around 80% are women and girls.
Traffickers follow a sickeningly methodical process, and it begins with isolating a child from those who love her. Persuaded by false promises of work experience or educational opportunities, parents voluntarily give their children to a relative or a stranger. Sometimes, they’re desperate enough to sell their children, often for a pittance. Often, the children themselves are lured by dreams of money, glamour or love. This last approach is the most prevalent in North America, and as one survivor said, “we were vulnerable to a smooth-talking recruiter, who…a new pair of sneakers and jeans, which at the time felt like the whole world to us.”
The child is then thrust into entirely alien surroundings—they are often moved to areas where they don’t speak the language, deprived of their passports (if they ever had any), and told that any efforts to escape will be result only in hostility from their captors and local police forces. They are then put through the ‘seasoning process,’ in which their captors repeatedly beat and rape them, teaching them fear and submission.
The effects are consistent, simple and tragic: the child is broken.
These docile slaves are then forced into various types of labor. Most often, the children are forced into the sex industry. Girls as young as four or five are put to work in prostitution and pornography, and while this is the most appalling of practices, those who are thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen are equally victimized. Other children are forced into domestic labor, farming, or work in the tourism service industry. Any largely unregulated sector is a prime recipient for trafficked children, who often don’t know enough to find a way out.
