Reality of Modern Day Slavery

My family was so poor. I had no future, she recalled. When he came to my town and offered me a job in America I knew this was my way out. I left with him the next day. He told me I could achieve my dreams. He even reminded me that I could send money home to my family. I could help them! My dreams were coming true. When we arrived in America, I was amazed by the homes and cars and children playing outside with toys. It was a world which I had never seen. We pulled up to a building in the city which didn’t look as kind as those houses we’d passed by. But I was happy to be here—to start a new life. He brought me inside and told me to rest here while he went out. He said he would be back after a bit. They fed me and I slept. After several hours, I had a bad feeling in my stomach. I sat on the bed waiting for him to come for me. But when the door opened, it was not him. A tall man with a large belly walked in. He grabbed me by the arm and began dragging me into another room. I fought him—kicking, screaming, and biting—but he was relentless. With a single blow to my jaw he knocked me unconscious. Days later when I woke up, I was locked in a room, chained to a bed. In that moment, I realized my dreams were not coming true.

            Many believe slavery has ceased to exist in the modern-day society in which we live, but this is simply not true. Each year, 1.2 million girls are forced into human sex-trafficking. Often referred to as modern-day slavery, the sex-trafficking industry has a current market value exceeding $32 billion.

By the end of this year, human sex-trafficking is predicted to be the number one crime world-wide. This is no suprise because right now the buying and selling of drugs is the highest crime, but with dugs you can onl buy and sell one time. When it comes to women and children, however, you only buy once but sell over and over again.

With girls being trafficked from 127 countries around the globe and exploited in 137 countries, there is no end in sight to this horrific form of slavery. Hearing this statistic made me wonder, okay this seems like a lot of contries, but aren't there hundreds and hundreds of countires in the world? Actually, it turns out there are only 194 countries in the world today, and girls are being trafficked into 137 of them. This is astounding to me.

While this is a world-wide epidemic, it is happening in our own backyard as well. Believe it or not, between 14,500 and 17,500 young women are being trafficked in the United States alone each year. The average of these girls is a mere fourteen year old, but recently there have been increasing numbers of girls being trafficked who are merely 5 and 6 years old in the US. Over 300,000 children here in the States are currently at risk to become victims of trafficking.

Every TWO MINUTES a child is being prepared for sexual exploitation through this miserable industry, some being forced to have sex with forty different men a night. How does one’s mind even comprehend such slavery?

These statistics are difficult to read and even more challenging to comprehend, but we MUST remember each one of these precious girls has a story to tell. They are someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s friend. It is the responsibility of this generation to stand up and give these girls a voice when their own has been taken. Through the uniting of women with a passion to see these girls not only rescued, but set free from the physical, psychological, and emotional pain inflicted upon them, an end to this modern-day human sex-trafficking industry can be attained.  

            Personally, I had no idea such slavery was in existence within my generation until about a year ago when I heard the testimony of a young girl who was victim to such crime. Hearing the horror of her story and past was indeed horrendous and sickening. But as she continued to share about the freedom she had found in her life after being rescued out of the trafficking world, I became very interested in somehow being involved. Not only did she speak of physical freedom, but also emotional and psychological freedom which she found was only possible in coming to know Jesus Christ as her savior. I knew from experience that Jesus was the only way for me to overcome my past as well. It was in this moment that the Lord began the process of breaking my heart for these women.