If we're going to address trafficking in our country we have to address poverty, racism & gender based violence.
Every age, race, socio-economic background of men are 'johns.' It's a little more complicated who's doing the selling. The truth is that the average street pimp selling American girls is often a man of color, however, Mexican pimps are selling Mexican girls, Russian men are selling Russian girls etc. Those who profit off the sex industry overall are not the ones who are standing out on the street. They're the owners of massage parlors, escort agencies, strip clubs, and brothels.
Girls weren’t drug addicted, they were love addicted, and that, I’ll learn, is far harder to treat.
Over time I learned that there were a lot of people who would judge you, blame you, and try to make you feel lesser, no matter what you did; that a degree, a good suit, and a career wouldn't always insulate you from scorn.
I think a huge part is how we're socialized growing up to see our value and worth as being tied into a relationship and how our culture teaches us a distorted sense of romantic love - can't live without you, can't breathe without you, I'll die without you. As teenage girls we believe that level of emotional intensity and dramatics equates with real love. We're also taught that if we date lots of people, then we're sluts, so at an early age we put all our eggs into one basket, so to speak, and concentrate on "the one".
An important documentary that sheds light on one of the most terrifying realities in the U.S. today—the commercial sexual exploitation of young girls. TRICKED is a comprehensive portrait of all the players in this human rights abuse: survivors, traffickers, johns and cops. Everyone should see this film.
I think boys and men are socialized very differently rather than girls and are trained not to show their emotions in the same way, to date lots of people, not just one exclusively, and are rewarded for many other things in our culture outside of maintaining a relationship.
Even in New York City, we've seen some major improvements from the way the system was 20 years ago. There's still a lot to do - we know that training workers and parents, reducing caseload size, developing therapeutic foster care, strengthening kinship care, and putting more emphasis into preventive care are all solutions. Unfortunately, if a child is in a situation where removal from the home becomes neccessary, there's already been trauma. Putting a traumatized child into a "system," not a home, with strangers is creating a perfect storm for further trauma.
