Exploiting the Most Vulnerable

Recently I wrote a magazine article news feature about sex slavery in the United States. An estimated 100,000 children are trafficked each year in this country.

For background, I read the sobering and heart-wrenching Renting Lacy: A Story of America’s Prostituted Children. Through skillful narrative, interwoven with commentary by author Linda Smith, the book shows the inside of the child prostitution industry from the prospective of the girls.

Smith, a former U.S. congresswoman, is founder of Shared Hope International, an organization that fights sex trafficking and commercial sex exploitation. The realistic, thought-provoking book clearly explains the psychological abuse that pimps inflict to keep these teen and pre-teen girls trapped. It also touches on the growing lust of the clients, which will only make the problem worsen unless Americans get angry enough to stop it.

That’s unlikely, with a growing demand for porn. And men who look at porn want increasingly taboo material. Lately, that has been child porn. If someone wants to have sex with a 16-year-old girl, it's not that much of a leap to be willing to pay for sex with an 11-year-old girl. It's time for the church to get angry about this.

When law enforcement officials bust up a sex slave ring, they have few options of placing the girls where they overcome the trauma they have suffered. But Jane Christiansen is doing something about the plague. As founder of God4Girls, Christiansen is working to open a home staffed by professional counselors to help restore hope to the youngest victims. I hope she is inundated with donations. Of course they will only be a drop in the bucket compared to what men shell out to look at and abuse defenseless girls.