Girls Are Not for Sale
by Shelbe Gibson (originally posted January 13, 2013 at TreveccaLive.com) This semester I am interning at End Slavery TN which is a non-profit organization that actually has an office right here on campus. End Slavery TN has a mission that I believe in very deeply. They work to provide victims and their advocates a single point of contact to services and service providers that can restore victims to wholeness in all aspects—spiritually, emotionally, physically, etc. So, End Slavery really is attacking the issue from all angles; working with the survivors, but also striving to make much needed policy changes, as they continue bringing awareness of this issue to local communities.
I feel the need to fight for justice for these young girls because I don’t think that most people even understand what the issue is. How can it be solved if the average person has the wrong idea of what human trafficking looks like? We have all heard about human trafficking from an international standpoint. We know about the impoverished foreign girls who are kidnapped and sold into sex slavery, and a good chunk of us have seen the movie Taken. But, human trafficking in America is very different from those pictures. And, unfortunately, escape and healing isn't as simple as it is in the movies—if only Liam Neeson was every girl’s father. In America, the words human trafficking are too often swapped with prostitution. It’s easy to have compassion towards a helpless foreign girl lost in America, but I have seen how quickly attitudes switch from compassion to almost disgust when a girl is seen as a prostitute. Prostitutes are there by choice, right? Wrong.
The truth is that a majority of prostitutes are NOT being paid for sex by their own personal choice—actually; they aren't being paid at all. The girls, who are many times under 18, are forced to hand over all of their earnings to their pimps. The pimps, aka traffickers, control every aspect of these young girls’ lives. With the average prostitute starting between the ages of 12 and 14, it’s super easy for the older men to manipulate and brainwash these innocent children. They are beaten, starved, humiliated and sold over and over. Eighty percent of child runaways will be exploited by a pimp, and this usually occurs within the first 48 hours after they leave home. Without exposing these ugly truths of the $32 billion a year sex industry in the US, how will we ever stop them? It’s time to stop glamorizing words like “pimps and pimping,” and it’s never okay to call a female a “whore, slut, or any other derogatory term.” Those are simple things we can and should do to alter this culture of wrongful sex.
It’s so important to care and love the victims of sex trafficking around the world, but it’s an injustice to ignore the ones living in our own backyards. The justice system in America cannot treat these sexually exploited children FORCED into prostitution as criminals as it often does. They are victims (more like survivors!!), and should be treated as such. These innocent babies are often times not even old enough to legally consent to sex, but can be thrown in jail for being paid for it. These contradictory laws need to be seen as such and then changed. Girls are not for sale. They deserve services, not sentences. John 3:18 says “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”
End Slavery TN is a beautiful light in the dark world of human trafficking. They can only function with volunteer help, though! I encourage anyone who feels called to get involved without any delay. The organization can definitely utilize your goals and passions to fit into ESTN. Executive Director Derri Smith was so welcoming and great to me—intertwining my interests and talents into an awesome way to serve these wonderful ladies! To get on board with ESTN, visitwww.endslaverytn.org, “like” the Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, or feel free to contact me with anything at all!
For a more up close and personal look into today’s sex industry & the trafficking that takes place, I highly recommend Rachel Lloyd’s Girls Like Us.