How To Break The Chains Of Child Prostitution

"We, as a society, will not tolerate what basically amounts to selling these kids as sex slaves," said Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon. His remark was made after Operation Cross Country IV, a seasonal attempt to rescue children from the hellish bondage of sexual slavery in the United States of America. Sweeping raids are conducted in targeted areas of the country as part of the FBI's Innocence Lost National Initiative, in partnership with local law enforcement officials and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The latest result: 52 children freed from sexual slavery.

To date, the 34 Innocence Lost Task Forces and Working Groups have recovered nearly 900 children from the streets. The investigations and subsequent 510 convictions have resulted in lengthy sentences, including multiple 25-years-to-life sentences and the seizure of more than $3.1 million in assets.

Some newspapers are now following up on the current fate of the children rescued from prostitution; they report that one month later, very few of the victims are "receiving the help experts say is necessary to overcome such trauma and rejoin society."

The victims need intensive residential treatment, experts say, and only three such programs exist.
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Lois Lee, founder of a 24-bed Los Angeles shelter called Children of the Night, sees the problems firsthand.
"When America's child prostitutes are identified by the FBI or police, they are incarcerated for whatever reason possible, whether it be an unrelated crime or 'material witness hold,' " she said. "Then they are dumped back in the dysfunctional home, ill-equipped group home or foster care, and [often] disappear back into the underground of prostitution with no voice."
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Experts say that sex-trafficking victims struggle to find the care they need once they escape from an industry that may involve at least 100,000 U.S. children.
Donna Hughes, a women's studies professor at the University of Rhode Island who has researched U.S. sex trafficking, said domestic victims are shortchanged by the attention authorities and advocacy groups give to the illegal importation of foreign prostitutes.
"We need more treatment programs," she said. "There are a number of different programs that have existed for years, but they need more support."
Lisa Goldblatt Grace, who consulted on a 2007 study for the Health and Human Services Department, said child victims "lack a safe, stable place to live, and that's part of what made them vulnerable to begin with."
Grace is program director of the My Life My Choice Project, a nonprofit focused on reaching out to adolescent girls most vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation.
The Health and Human Services Department study found only four residential treatment centers in the United States for child prostitutes, with a total of 45 beds.
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[Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children ]said U.S. child victims numbered between 100,000 and 300,000.

The human race's capacity for inflicting cruelty upon itself knows no bounds; imagine the suffering of a young life so filled with misery that the evil of slavery can come to be seen as the Lesser of Evils...