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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCracked: 5 Things I Learned as a Sex Slave in Modern America (Warning - disturbing content)
Last edited Mon Sep 15, 2014, 12:17 AM - Edit history (1)
Complete articleNOTE: We don't have a policy of putting trigger warnings on articles, but if there exists anywhere on Earth an article that needs such a warning, here it fucking is. In fact, if this doesn't disturb you, there is a good chance you are a crazy person.[/]
-snip-
The next question that's flashing through your mind is probably, "Why didn't you tell someone?"
I did -- I was just 6 years old when I (accidentally) mentioned something about my "uncles" to a teacher -- I just said something like: "My uncle's came over and we had fun," because those were the words my mom always used. If you think at this point a SWAT team raced to my house and busted everyone, you and I live in different worlds. What happened instead was the teacher called my mom, and she talked her way out of it somehow. When I got home, she beat me up, I think to block out her entire Terrible Person Bingo card.
What a crazy, unusual situation, right? If you saw it in a scripted movie, you'd think the writer should go see a therapist. But here's the truth: human trafficking (forcing someone into labor or sex acts against their will) is a $9.5 billion industry in the USA -- to pick a random comparison, that's four times what the Burger King chain takes in. Recent stats found 83 percent of sex trafficking incidents in the U.S. involved victims that were U.S. citizens, and nearly half of those were minors -- just like I was. It's estimated that right now 300,000 kids are in this situation or are at risk. Just this June, the FBI freed 168 kids who'd been sold into sex slavery across 106 American cities. Since 2008, at least 4,000 kids have been freed from similar operations. Six years. So, yeah, my story is as isolated an incident as the existence of Walmart stores.
Some of the victims are runaways, some just have awful parents. All of them are invisible, as far as mainstream society goes. That's how this stuff hides; I was a chameleon good student and industrious worker with various part-time jobs, with a secret life in forced prostitution. That first part was important to my mother -- keeping up appearances, looking like the "good girl."
BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)I usually try to add some humor with my posts on DU. Not this one. It's just so depressingly sad and sick, I just want to cry.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)How in the hell can people be so damned nuts to do this to children?
Some, I guess, because that is the way they were brought up. The only way I see to break that chain is to make it all come out in the open by making it perfectly good to have children be able to talk about it via sex education in our schools. Hiding sex education hides these terrible crimes.
Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)It comes from a study about how many children might be at risk for such exploitation. From a Village Voice article giving more detail:
Who, then, is at risk?
Not surprisingly, the professors find that any "outsider" is at risk.
More specifically, the "at risk" category, to get up to 300,000, includes all runaways (although most are gone less than a week), transgender kids, female gang members, and kids who live near the Mexican or Canadian borders and have their own transportation.
For the Voice's detailed analysis, see "Real Men Get Their Facts Straight".
Although the study is widely quoted for its estimate of 100,000 to 300,000 children at risk, and usually misquoted as if that were the number in sexual slavery, one of the coauthors of the study takes a different view. He estimated that the number of children kidnapped and put into sex slavery is "a few hundred." (The article isn't clear whether this is per year or total.)
Obviously, even few hundred is a few hundred too many, but at least it's not 300,000.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)"Since 2008, at least 4,000 kids have been freed from similar operations. Six years."
Average 667/year freed plus some number not found.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)"Uncles" were not *privileged* .....
Also = You might want to consider a Trigger Warning in the Subject Line of your OP.
Thanks.
Algernon Moncrieff
(5,781 posts)Admittedly, I figured the title served as it's own kind of warning, but you can't be too careful.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)ignorance about this subject that I have witnessed previously on here, one can never be to sure or safe.
We have had to provide a lot of education on this topic.
Thank you for understanding and bringing this OP to DU.
Kick.
SomethingFishy
(4,876 posts)And to have to find out from Cracked? Man our priorities are so fucked up.
deafskeptic
(463 posts)Heidi
(58,237 posts)NealK
(1,851 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)DRoseDARs
(6,810 posts)...if she put a bullet in the head of her stepfather, mother, and every last person she went to for help in that small town that ratted her out to her parents.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)That school guidance counselor...Jesus fuckin' Christ
Frank Cannon
(7,570 posts)I could easily see them behaving this way, particularly in rural "family values" America, where all the leaders know everyone else and ANY controversy is quickly swept under the rug.
This makes me terribly sad.
ChazII
(6,203 posts)The Super Bowl will be played in Phoenix this year. An acquaintance of mine had a daughter who was kidnapped in a gang related dispute and sold to sex traffickers. The daughter was held and forced to work as a prostitute and yes her pimps to her and several other girls to a Super Bowl. The police departments will be watching for girls and boys in this situation. It is horrible and sadly the daughter ended up dead a few years later.
mackerel
(4,412 posts)There was a City Councilman there who saw a couple of his former students got busted for pimping these little kids. He put together a city resolution to bring awareness to it. I hope more City Councils openly discuss it because it is happening in every city in this country.
Does anyone know who the clientel are? I wish the people that pay for this stuff could get exposed big time.
proverbialwisdom
(4,959 posts)Tiger, Tiger: A Memoir
by Margaux Fragoso
http://us.macmillan.com/tigertiger/margauxfragoso
whttevrr
(2,345 posts)May 24, 2011...
In this other article one of the young girls is tricked into slavery by an aunt...
It's horrific anywhere, but damn...
Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/05/sex-trafficking-201105?currentPage=all
A 13 year old for $500...
Then, one day in December 2003, at a sleazy motor inn on the Berlin Turnpikean 11.2-mile time-warp stretch of asphalt, lined on either side with at least 37 other no-tell motelsParis remitted Forbes $1,200, and the girls, court documents show, were his. Buying girls like livestock is not unusual. Cheryl, a gems girl, at about 14 was sold by one pimp, Love, to another pimp, Junior, for $600. The New York City Police detective Wayne Taylorconvicted in July 2008 for the attempted kidnapping of a 13-year-oldpurchased his thrall for $500 from a Brooklyn pimp partner. In fact, the price for an adolescent female slave is far lower than it was in the mid19th century, when, adjusted to todays dollar, the going rate was roughly $40,000, the price of a car.
What a nightmare...
daredtowork
(3,732 posts)Ever since Welfare Reform of the 1980s, welfare is structured not to be survivable. It's not in direct cash, it's regular, it's not enough for regular housing so you essentially have to become homeless first to get on it, there is no means to pay utility bills or acquire basic necessities, and no subsidy for transportation. The system is filled with mandates of appointments and documentation but no way to pay for them. In some cracked GOP mind this means that a person will "choose" to work (even though they can't even take a bus to get to work) rather than the impossible situation of welfare. Otherwise, leaving it impossible will drive the undesirables away or even quietly kill them off.
But people just don't lay down and die like that. People tend to do what they can to survive. They turn to begging, prostitution, and crime. The work under the table - even as slaves in exchange for a place to stay.
The State knows this happens because it's the only thing that can happen. People can't exist in non-time and non-space. They aren't conveniently disappearing. They haven't risen in revolution yet, either. Somehow they are getting a roof over their head and getting basic necessities without getting those things through a taxpayer funded social safety net. The taxpayers are happy about that! Everyone wins except the poor guy that gets robbed on a corner. But perhaps when he hands over his wallet he should regard it as the cost of doing business, because for every 1 person that takes the risk of taking what they need, a hundred will meekly submit to slavery and his tax savings will more than make up what he lost on that corner.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Trafficking is my wife's brief and it's something we both care about very much. I wish more people understood how serious this situation is.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)does a better job covering a serious issue than most of the media.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)They're really good at serious social commentary, as well as humour.
Cracked.com is so much more than the paper magazine it was in the 60's, 70's and 80's.
Sid
Algernon Moncrieff
(5,781 posts)riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)Prophet 451
(9,796 posts)I mean, I knew there were modern sex slaves but when I see those ads for someone who wants to be a "full-time submissive", I just figured it was some kinky people looking for playmates (and I'm sure that most of them are).
snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)This is not in any way to dismiss the problem. I just have doubts as to whether this particular story is real.
Algernon Moncrieff
(5,781 posts)The story is compelling, but I'd agree that it's been stylized to fit Cracked's editorial format.
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)It's hard for me to take it too seriously.