Trafficking of children for illicit purposes has become a problem throughout the world, including the United States.
Shared Hope International recently issued a report on Capitol Hill on the trafficking of children as well as the work people do to rescue them. Ambassador Luis C. de Baca of the State Department tells OneNewsNow it is hard to imagine children working the streets for a living. "Kids who should be enjoying their middle-school years, gossiping with their friends and thinking about the homecoming dance, instead are laboring in these sweat shops or they're suffering in these brothels. I mean it's just horrifying when you think about it," he admits. According to a Shared Hope International article, a child sex-trafficking victim who is purchased for sex by five different men per night, five nights per week for an average of five years would have been raped by 6,000 buyers during her victimization through prostitution. "The Justice Department did a study a few years ago that indicated that there's as many as 300,000 a year who are at risk of this type of exploitation," de Baca adds, "but we want to find out not just who's at risk but who's actually being actively abused." The Shared Hope International report suggests the major problems are the girls being prosecuted while their abusers walk free, plus a lack of treatment and care to remove them from the streets.
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