In 2001, a friend of mine began working for an anti-human
trafficking organization as a liaison and a zealous abolitionist. I’d never
heard of sex trafficking before except brief mentions on Dateline regarding girls overseas that were abducted and sold. Over
the next few weeks, my friend offered me a crash course in sex
trafficking—plying me with statistics, news articles, case studies, and books
addressing the topic.
Absolutely horrified, I began to extensively research the
topic, sickened by some of the things I read. What kind of monsters could do
that to another human being? Was this for real? It was a reality that was hard
to fathom or comprehend for my average, then-twenty-something suburban mind. In
2009, I wrote a novel on the topic, AllThat is Right and Holy.
Although I originally had agent representation for
the book, in 2009 the Christian fiction world was skeptical about taking on
such a tough subject, so I eventually self-published. My readership was small,
but I was amazed by the response I got. People contacted me to tell me they’d
never heard of this issue and were eager to learn more about it.
In 2015, it’s impossible to turn on the television or
open a newspaper without reading about trafficked women and girls. Venues
posing as massage parlors, restaurants, or modeling services house the
trappings for young women that span all ethnic and social demographics.
Schools, shopping malls, and train stations are hunting grounds for the
runaway, the naïve, and the lost. This has prompted me to write another novel
on the subject, which is currently with an editor, after which I’ll begin
shopping it around to agents and publishers.
Because I do write about darker topics, I’ve changed up
the focus of my blog to feature snippets about trafficking, pornography, and
child exploitation issues for my Thursday posts. On Friday, I’ll still have
more light-hearted Favorite-Things-Friday fun.
Trafficking was never just an “over-there” problem,
people simply didn’t realize that trafficking was not only about moving people
across borders. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the
formal definition of trafficking is found in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons as
“the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons,
by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of
abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of
vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve
the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of
exploitation.” This broader, more modern definition would of course include
prostitution of all kinds, pornography, stripping, etc. Make no mistake. Sex trafficking happens
every day in our towns, neighborhoods, and in our schools.
If you’re interested in learning more about the wide-spread
nature of sex trafficking and exploitation, check out the National Center onSexual Exploitation based in Washington, D.C. They are passionate about the
work and comprehensive in their resources.
Have you heard about specific incidents of sexual
exploitation in your city or town?
