OPINION:
The “Sound of Freedom” may have taken movie audiences by storm this summer, but the subject matter — the sordid world of child sex trafficking — has been, for all intents and purposes, out in the open for a long time.
It takes a special kind of evil to prostitute and traffic a child for sex, and yet this evil walks among us every minute of every day.
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Consider this: every two minutes, a child is bought and sold for sex.
Hundreds of young girls and boys — some as young as 9 years old —are being bought and sold for sex, as many as 20 times per day.
Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States alone.
It is estimated that the number of children who are at risk of being trafficked or have already been sold into the sex trade would fill 1,300 school buses.
On average, a child might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period.
Child rape has become Big Business in America.
This is not a problem found only in big cities. It’s happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities and towns across the nation.
As Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children points out, “The only way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for it.”
It is estimated that at least 100,000 to 500,000 children — girls and boys — are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.
Like so many of the evils in our midst, sex trafficking (and the sexualization of young people) is a cultural disease that is rooted in the American police state’s heart of darkness. It speaks to a sordid, far-reaching corruption that stretches from the highest seats of power (governmental and corporate) down to the most hidden corners and relies on our silence and our complicity to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing.
The internet has become the primary means of sexual predators to target and sell young children for sex.
“One in five kids online are sexually propositioned through gaming platforms and other social media. And those, non-contact oriented forums of sexual exploitation are increasing,” said researcher Brian Ulicny.
It’s not just young girls who are vulnerable, either.
According to a USA Today investigative report, “boys make up about 36 percent of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry (about 60 percent are female and less than 5 percent are transgender males and females).”
Every year, the ages of the girls and boys being bought and sold get younger and younger.
The average age of those being trafficked is 13. Yet as the head of a group that combats trafficking pointed out, “Let’s think about what average means. That means there are children younger than 13. That means 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds.”
“They’re minors as young as 13 who are being trafficked,” noted a 25-year-old victim of trafficking. “They’re little girls.”
This is America’s dirty little secret.
But what or who is driving this evil appetite for young flesh? Who buys a child for sex?
Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life.
“They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.
According to criminal investigator Marc Chadderdon, these “buyers” — the so-called “ordinary” men who drive the demand for sex with children — represent a cross-section of American society: every age, every race, every socio-economic background, cops, teachers, corrections workers, pastors, etc.
The culture is also grooming these young people to be preyed upon by sexual predators.
That so many children continue to be victimized, brutalized and treated like human cargo is due to three things. One, a consumer demand that is increasingly lucrative for everyone involved — except the victims. Two, a level of corruption so invasive on both a local and international scale that there is little hope of working through established channels for change. And three, an eerie silence from individuals who fail to speak out against such atrocities.
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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest books The Erik Blair Diaries and Battlefield America: The War on the American People are available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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