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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Human Trafficking

As a member of my county's Human Trafficking Task Force, I'd like to take it upon myself to increase awareness about the serious problem going on in our country right now with - yep, you guessed it, human trafficking. So, here you go...


  • Over 12 million people world wide are trafficked annually.

  • 80% of human trafficking victims are women and children.

  • Human trafficking is the second largest (and fastest growing) criminal industry in the world. It makes $17 billion dollars in profits each year (second only to drug trafficking).

  • About $18,000 people report being victims of human trafficking each year in the U.S.

  • A report released by the University of Pennsylvania in 2001 cites as many as 300,000 children in the United States are at high risk of being trafficked into the sex industry at any given time.
  • An estimated 2,000 children go missing in the United States every day. Of these, only a small number of children are found. Many people believe that a large number of our missing children are falling victim to sex trafficking and enslavement, organized by large, international pedophile rings.

  • Since 2007, the Innocence Lost National Initiative and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children have teamed up to combat sex trafficking of children and have successfully led to the recovery of over 200 American children who were previously listed as missing and endangered.
We are in the process of developing an outreach program in our city. It's amazing how shocked people are to hear it's such a problem. Do some research in your area and you'll see a disturbing increase in these crimes. Awareness is the first step in eradicating this issue. 

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