trafficking4

The world's sex trafficking organizations are now focusing their criminal
attentions on Latin America. They see a rich pool of "raw material" - people, from
which they feel free to kidnap, entrap and cajole hundreds of thousands of poor
women and children into a life of sexual slavery.
Once enslaved, these women and children will be transported and sold to
brothels in Latin America, Asia, Europe, the United States and Canada. Sex
Slaves have been known to be sold in the U.S. for up to $16,000 each (source:
The Protection Project).
Within the U.S., over 100,000 enslaved persons have already been “imported.”
Each year an estimated 50,000 women and children are trafficked illegally into the
U.S. to be sexually or otherwise exploited as slaves. An estimated 1/3rd of those
50,000 trafficked persons are from Latin America.
Part of Latin America's problem with prostitution and the exploitation of children
is that most Latin countries regard children as being fully developed in terms of
making their own decisions, from the age of 11 or 12. At those ages, these
children are not able to make decisions regarding danger. Adult men and criminal
gangs take advantage of that fact, and the lack of codified legal protections to
protect children of this age from exploitation.
In some cases, these girls are put into a position of having to help support their
families living in severe poverty. In many Latin American countries, up to 80% of
girl prostitutes were sexually abused at home by a relative. Widespread child
prostitution in Latin America results from poverty and a lack of social support that
these children face from their families and societies. Parental substance abuse
is another major factor.
Within this Latin American social environment, children are exposed to
exploitation at a young age. Many girls and also boys were introduced to
prostitution at age 7, 8, 9, 10, 11… Girls as young as 12 also marry adult men in
some Latin American countries.
Colombia - Age of consent for sexual activity: females: age 12, males: age 14. Age
of consent for marriage: females: 14, males: 16. - Interpol (These are typical
ages of sexual consent under Latin American laws.)
This lack of legal protection for young girls allows sexual exploitation to occur
with impunity. As a Honduran woman immigrant in Washington, DC recently stated
the issue (from personal experience): "Adult men marry these young girls and
treat them like children" [in terms of power in the relationship]. A Salvadoran
immigrant woman in Washington, DC, related how she was kidnapped openly and
with impunity at age 12, was taken to a distant town and was made into the wife of
an adult man (a stranger) against her will. She had nobody to turn to for help. An
elder Salvadoran musician in Washington, DC once opined that "the greatest
tragedy that I have seen in El Salvador is that young girls, in teenage conflict with
their families, get married too young, to adult men.
Law enforcement cannot, or will not protect these young girls from sexual
exploitation. In many areas police run the brothels themselves. With public
pressure from non-governmental organizations such as Casa Alianza national
governments in some regions of Latin America are just beginning to focus
attention on their responsibilities to their children. Costa Rica, an epicenter of
the child sex tourism "trade" is an example of a country that requires constant
public pressure and even lawsuits to force it to protect its own children from
sexual exploitation.
At the time of this writing a global economic slowdown is causing mass
joblessness and increased poverty in many Latin American countries. In Ecuador,
South America, for example, only 25% of the adults have full time jobs and
inflation is running at 91%. The rest of Latin America is straining under similar
circumstances. Under these economic conditions crimes against women and
children can be expected to increase significantly.
The combination of increased organized crime involvement in sex trafficking,
increased poverty and the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic will cause the sex
trafficking and exploitation of women and children to become an even more
critical emergency than it already is. We must all do our part to help change that
reality for the better by taking action now.
Time is of the essence!