Sex Trafficking: Then and Now
Linnea Hoops
March Blog
Sex trafficking has been in the news a lot lately, but what
most people don’t know is that sex trafficking has been around since our
nations history has started.
The first history we have of sex slavery is after someone
who our nation looks up to and even has a holiday named after him. The one and
only: Christopher Columbus. When Columbus discovered the Bahamas, he took
advantage of the people that resided on the island. Not only did he selling all
the native women and children into sexual slavery for money, but he also raped
them himself.[1]
The FBI has done a study and concluded that sex trafficking
is the fastest growing business of organized crime in the world. North Carolina
is anticipated to be in the top eight states for sex trafficking. Since
Charlotte is close to Atlanta it makes it a major spot for young girls to be
transported between the two cities.[2] It
is scary to think that girls are transported around the nation in different
various ways. The amount of transporting the industry does makes it harder to
track and find girls to bring them to safety and their traffickers to justice.
The conditions that a sex slave has to sustain are horrible.
Melissa Woodward shared her story with the 700 Club and told of the conditions
she had to survive in. She was housed in a warehouse and was only fed a
sandwich and water each day. Her and another girl were chained to a twin bed
and were required to serve anywhere between 5 to 30 men a night. Some men beat her,
while others were regulars and would sometimes hold her. After a night of
servicing all different kinds of men they girls were put in freezing cold
showers to reduce the swelling of their fragile small bodies. I don’t think I
could last more than a day in these conditions and I wouldn’t want to even
imagine trying to stay alive.[3]
Being a young woman near the city is actually quite scary. I
can’t imagine being sold into the industry and possibly never seeing my family
again or being killed because of the strenuous. Knowing that young women my age
are strung out on drugs and being raped in the city, so close to me is enough
to almost give me nightmares. Every woman that has ever been involved with the
sex industry I feel deep empathy and respect for. This is a huge industry that
needs to be stopped, but would take a lot of work to stop.
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