Stopping sex-slave trade in the global economy

Published in the Our Sunday Visitor
April 02, 2000

Official U.S. estimates are that 2 million people, including 500,000 children, are being forced into prostitution.

A silent but horrific practice degrading women and children is, proliferating around the world. Known as sexual trafficking, it involves a systematic effort to kidnap females, many of whom are preteens, into forced prostitution.

The State Department estimates that 2 million people, including 500,000 children, are led into sexual slavery around the world each year. And, astonishingly, 50,000 are annually spirited into the United States, which may now have as many as 1 million such victims.

In some instances, women and children are forcibly abducted, but often they’re lured by local operatives with offers of legitimate jobs such as factory work. Once out of their country, they are processed through a dark subculture of sex drugs, intimidation and inhumane treatment.

The long-term effects of their captivity are nearly always disastrous. In addition to mental anguish, physical pain and family alienation, many women contract AIDS and die. In some cases, this forced recruitment is literally a death sentence.

For example, 200,000 Nepalese girls have been taken to India for sexual purposes. A common destination is Bombay, which has the world’s largest red-light district; 80 percent of all “sex workers” there have AIDS.

But their suffering has helped create a $3 billion-a-year industry. According to Diane Knippers of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, “Sexual trafficking is a massive economic business – essentially, the buying and selling of human beings.”

One effort to combat this growing problem has been the formation of a U.S. based coalition called the Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking (IAST). It has the support of more than 30 organizations, comprised mostly of evangelical Protestant groups and think tanks.

“IAST considers sexual trafficking an intolerable evil because it so completely strips its victims of their human dignity,” said Lisa Thompson of the National Association of Evangelicals. “To look the other way when confronted with such an ineffable horror is unthinkable.’

To draw attention to the issue, IAST held a briefing and rally on March 8 in Arlington, Va. It attracted several leaders in the field, about 200 supporters and, most grippingly, two Mexican women who had been held captive.

“Inez,” from Vera Cruz, explained how she was tricked into forced prostitution after agreeing to enter the United States to work in a restaurant. After arriving in Brownsville, Texas, she went to Houston and then on to Florida, where she was placed on a sex tour of trailer parks.

“I could not believe this was happening to me, ” she said, “but even worse, some of the girls were as young as 14 years old.”

“Inez” and “Maria” also from Vera Cruz, were freed when local police and Immigration and Naturalization Services agents raided their trailer parks. They were among the fortunate few.
Andrew Levine, an independent filmmaker, has documented the plight of less fortunate Nepalese women who were abducted to Bombay and who seemingly have no opportunity for escape from sexual bondage.

His video footage, much of it undercover, shows women burned with cigarettes and acid for noncompliance. They are routinely raped. Some have up to 40-45 sexual encounters a day, often with their small children wider the bed sedated with opium.

The physical surroundings are reminiscent of cages replete with iron-padlocked gates. Ironically, one “escape” for some women is when they contract AIDS and are routinely kicked out like refuse. One-half of the world’s sex trafficking takes place in Asia, but the problem touches every continent. About 250,000 women per year are brought from Russia and Eastern Europe to Western countries. According to a Harvard University, study, 20 U.S. cities are entry points for some of these women as well as for Latin American, Asian and African women.

IAST is looking at ways to heighten public awareness, primarily through faith-based communities, Its sponsors run the gamut from the National Association of Evangelicals to the National Council of Churches, but includes no official Catholic endorsement.

One reason the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC) has not joined IAST is suggested by Lacy Wright of the conference’s migrants and refugee services office. He said the USCC, which is the public-policy arm of the U.S. bishops, is “wary of getting involved in coalitions and gets involved in a very careful and determined way when it does.”

But his colleague, Gerard Powers, emphasized: “We have been in the process for some months of figuring out what we are going to do on this issue. We are seized with the issue and agree that it’s a major problem that has to be effectively addressed.”

Powers, who works in the bishops’ international justice and peace office, said potential federal legislation needs to wade through complex issues of immigration law as well as determining the most effective way to apply leverage to noncooperating countries.

A bill with considerable support among those following the problem is H.R. 1356, sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), a pro-life Catholic, and 39 other members from both parties.

Introduced in March 1999, the law would set up an Office for the Protection of Victims of Trafficking in the State Department; include sexual trafficking data in the annuaul human-rights report; tighten certain visa requirements; and cut off nonhumanitarian foreign aid to recalcitrant countries.

‘Saying that sanctions “represent an appropriate response to the scourge of the worldwide sex-trafficking industry,” 138 prominent leaders sent a letter to the congressional leadership last summer endorsing Smith’s bill, which has yet to come to the House floor for a vote.

By Joseph Esposito

Esposito ([email protected]) writes from Washington, D.C. The Institute Against Sexual Trafficking can be reached at 1001 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 522, Washington, DC 20036, phone (202) 789-1011 or at www.iast.net