The

Exploitation of Child Sex Trafficking and How

It Affects the United States of America, China, and
Russia

Social and Economic Justice
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Margery Saunders

By: Baylee Read



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Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry where perpetrators profit from

the control and exploitation of others. While it can be found during the Super Bowl, it can
also be found at motorcycle rallies in South Dakota, in the fields of Florida, in gangs in
California, and in brothels in Washington, D.C. It is modern slavery, and it affects every
corner of the country. (Polaris, 2014).

When we think about the vision of a human trafficker or prostitute, what do we

think? I am sure many of us think about the vision of Julia Roberts in the movie Pretty
Woman; short skirt, tall heeled boots, standing on a street corner in the dark. I am sure not
many of you thought of men and children standing in the exact same position participating
in the same acts, but they do. The act of sex trafficking and prostitution associate all
genders and all ages.

In the world we live in, we all hear about the problems that are going on all over the

globe. But something that we do not think about all the time is that these problems are also
going on within our own country. A topic that most people do not believe goes on within
our own country is child sex trafficking. When the problem of child sex trafficking is
thought of, our minds tend to drift to any other country than the United States. Along with
many other countries, the United States of America suffers from the problem of child sex
trafficking. Even though the United States is a well-developed country doesnt mean that
adults and child are not being sold in exchange for sexual favors. A few of the main causes
of child sex trafficking are homelessness, drug addiction, and being a runaway. These are
situations that happen all over the globe and in every state of the United States. Peoples
obsession with money and the products that money can buy cause them to participate in
things that are harmful to not only themselves, but also to others.
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According to Reich (1970), sexual repression is at the roots of

authoritarianism and violence. Authoritarian regime is produced by the
embedding of sexual inhibitions and fear in sexual impulses. Sexual
repression changes the structure of politically and economically suppressed
people in such a way that they act, feel, and think contrary to their own
material interests. (Cao, L., Stack, S., 2010, p. 531)
The way Reich explains prostitution and sex trafficking is in a psychological,
impulsive way, which in some cases may be true. Children and adults who fall into
the life of sex trafficking do not always ask for that life, but sometimes are taken in
and caused to take out their past life experiences there. An example of this is when I
child runs away from home to escape some sort of abuse, they may fall into the life
of prostitution because they are making money and may already be used to the kind
of harm. Prostitution may seem like nothing to someone who had been sexually
abused their whole life, because they may think that that is just how life is for them.
This constant obsession for money is an obsession spread throughout the world.
Disparity will bring people to do things they never thought they would be doing.
The United States of America
Child sex trafficking is a problem that is spread throughout the world, and it
is an issue that is very difficult to get control of. Most of the children that are
associated with prostitution are people that run away from home at an early age.
Also, in many cases the reason behind the girls and boys running away from home is

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to escape abuse that was happening at home. In the United States, 1 out of every 3
children that runaway will be lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving
home.(Veronicas Voice, 2013). These kids that runaway and are essentially
homeless, so they turn to prostitution as a way to survive on the streets. These
children are very vulnerable and are taken advantage of. A study shows that there
are about 2.8 million children living on the streets in the United States and that
about 600,000 children under the age of 18 that are involved in child prostitution or
child pornography (Veronicas Voice, 2013). When a survey was taken nationally in
2003 of the shelter youths in the United States 10% answered that they had
participated in sex to make money, and to receive food or shelter (Pedersen, W.,
Hegna, K., 2003, p. 136). The ages of entry for children to join in on sex trafficking
are increasingly getting younger. The ages for girls to join used to be 13 to 14 years
of age and now it is as low as 12 years old and they age out in their mid to late 20s.
For boys, the average age of entry is 14 years old and the age that they age out is
around 25 years old.
According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a child is
considered to be anyone under the age of 18 years old, and defines that the
difference between child sexual abuse and prostitution is that prostitution involves
child commercial exploitation and not just incest or molestation like sexual abuse
(Willis, B., Levy, B., 2013, p. 1417). The children that are taken into or voluntarily
entered the life of prostitution experience extreme conditions that are barely
livable. In some cases the conditions that were found to be where child prostitutes
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live are very similar to the living conditions of those who were in slavery (Willis, B.,
Levy, B., 2013, p. 1418). Also under the convention under Articles 34 and 39, when
addressing the issue of human rights, governments are obligated to protect all
children from prostitution and must take all appropriate measure to promote the
recover and social reintegration of children who have been exploited (Willis, B.,
Levy, B., 2013, p. 1418). Children should feel protected by their government and
believe that they are always safe and shouldnt have to fear anything.
By definition, a sex trafficking victim is a person suffering extreme distress
in a relationship that is exploitive. However, one of the surprising things we
found about the street sex market is that young women have a surprising
amount of agency. We encountered so many young women who had expired
their pimps who were brutal or bullying them. (Gummow, 2013).
In most situations, most of the adults and children do not want to be rescued from the life
(Gummow, 2013). They do not feel that they are endangered. They almost feel as if it is the
only place for them and that they are doing just fine. Due to most of them having a past of
sexual abuse or other trauma, they feel that selling themselves is the best they can do for
themselves, and they do not see a reason to get out.
Traffickers are wanting younger and younger people to pick from because the
younger they are, the lesser the chance for them to have any sexually transmitted diseases.
Which explains why they age out at still a pretty young age, but by that time in their lives
they are worn out and no one wants them. By this time in their lives, they either choose a
different path to go down or they continue to stay within the sex trafficking system, either

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as prostitutes or pimps. Children that are part of sex trafficking do not always have a
pimp. The John Jay study said, most children are not pimped in the traditional sense
but instead are recruited by familial procurers or friends known to them who do not
manage their work but rather facilitate them by offering shelter or referring them to
buyers in exchange for clients or a share of their earnings. (Gummow, 2013). The reason
why children can get easily sucked into this issue is because they are desperate for money,
food, and shelter. And with being so naive to world they dont think too much into it if
someone comes out of the blue offering them all these things in exchange for a few other
things. In the situation that a pimp controls things, it can get very nasty. The pimps
normally take most of the money, control the person in every way possible, and are
abusive.

World wide the problem with child trafficking is something that is very difficult to

get under control. It is each countrys responsibility to keep their forced labor under
control and try to eliminate it, if possible. China and Russia are two of the countries out of
the many that are on the Watch List for their problems with controlling forced labor and
sex trafficking (Khazan, 2013). There are four tiers that distinguish the levels of problem.
There is Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2 Watch List, and Tier 3. As you increase up the tiers, the bigger
the problem is for the country. The longer a country is on the Watch List the bigger their
chance of getting cut of certain benefits. Due to Russia and Chinas lack of efforts to fix the
problems and after being on the Tier 2 Watch List for 9 years straight they were dropped to
Tier 3. According to Hua Chunying, Beijings foreign spokeswoman, she feels that the
United States needs to take an objective and impartial view of Chinas efforts and stop
making unilateral or arbitrary judgments of China (Khazan, 2013). This was in return to the
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possibility of the United States sanctioning ties with China and other countries that
continued to be on the Tier 3 level.
China

The views of prostitution in China have changed drastically throughout the years.

Chinas definition of prostitution is improper conduct between two sexes with money or
property as the medium of exchange (Cao, L., Stack, S., 2010, p. 532). Original thoughts
about sex trafficking and prostitution were that the women and child were worthy of their
sympathy and deserved to be helped and possibly saved, now a days people in China think
of them as people who are despicable and should be punished for the acts they commit
(Cao, L., Stack, S., 2010, p. 532). Sex trafficking was thought of as something that corrupted
peoples minds, was dangerous for social structure and social atmosphere. People also
believed that due to the corrupted minds of individuals that participated in prostitution
would cause many other problems for their civilization. In China, there is a one-child policy,
which people believe to be one of the contributing factors to sex trafficking happening in
the country. From Chinas one-child policy, the skewed sex ratio of 118 boys to 100 girls
was caused, which then created a huge demand for the trafficking of foreign women as
brides for Chinese men and for forced prostitution. (Christian Headlines, 2014). Due to the
scarce amount of woman in China, and frankly, such little respect for woman, it causes a
sense of male power. "Traffickers recruited girls and young women, often from rural areas
of China, using a combination of fraudulent job offers, imposition of large travel fees, and
threats of physical or financial harm, to obtain and maintain their service in prostitution."
(Khazan, 2013). Girls of all ages are being tricked into becoming a part of this life by

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misleading information, which relates to what happens in the United States with how
pimps can get kids hooked on drugs and out on the streets within a day.

China has found that along with the problem of having prostitution in their country,

there has been an increase in cases relating to STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). Since
the 1980s there had been a rapid increase with the amount of people infected with some
sort of sexually transmitted diseases. In the 1990s a report estimated that from half to two-
thirds of all the people that were infected with some form of an STD occurred in single
individuals, a growth rate in that population segment of 105.6% (Gil, V., Wang, M.,
Anderson, A., Lin, G., WU, Z., 1996, p.149). In Chinas efforts to control prostitution they
made sure to embody public health measures against STDs and HIV/AIDS in The Frontier
Health and Quarantine Law of the Peoples Republic of China, and in which they stated in
"Article 22 of this act, that any spreading of quarantinable disease, or creating the risk that
would spread such a disease, is a violation of Article 178 of the Criminal Law (Gil, V., Wang,
M., Anderson, A., Lin, G., WU, Z., 1996, p.149). China has made an effort to fix their country
because they do not feel that it is right for people to live their lives the way that prostitutes
do, it is against Human Rights to be under appreciated like that.
Russia
The research of trafficking has been a new phenomenon for people in Russia due to
the connection with organized crime. Trafficking is described as the organized trade of
either weapons and drugs, and women and children who are exploited for prostitution,
pornography or as unpaid laborer across the national borders (Alalehto, T., 2010, p. 96). In
Russia, there is estimated to be around 50,000 children that are involved involuntary
prostitution (Christian Headlines, 2014). "In 2012, the government deported hundreds of
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labor trafficking victims found in squalid conditions in a Moscow garment factory and
levied criminal charges against other trafficking victims allegedly held in servitude for a
decade." (Khazan, 2013). Even with Russias attempt to break down the trafficking and
forced labor system, it still isnt enough with how big the problem really is. The problem is
so large in Russia because the Russian prostitutes tend to manage to be connected with
Norwegian, Finland, and other surrounding countries prostitutes (Alalehto, T., 2010, p.
103). The situation is similar to those in China and the United States, it is a system that
people dont always go looking for but somehow find themselves in and dont really intend
on getting out of. To the people that are involved with trafficking it appears to be the best
they can do for the time being, and they think the money and pain is worth it. But in reality,
you are not only breaking laws but also degrading yourself.

Child prostitution and sex trafficking are not just problems that affect the world

emotionally, but they are also extremely destructive physically to the people involved. Even
though the emotional effects are very destructive as well, the physical effects can go
beyond just the child involved. There are multiple side effects of being involved in
prostitution, such as infectious diseases, pregnancy, mental illness, substance abuse,
violence, and malnutrition.
The statistics of all of these effects worldwide for infectious disease are
2,000,000 for STDs, 300,000 for HIV infection, 4,500,000 for HPV infection,
and 500,000 for HBV infection. For pregnancy there are 4752 maternal
deaths, 900,000 spontaneous abortions, 1,224,000 induced abortions,
367,200 abortion-related complications, and 710 abortion-related deaths.

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For mental illnesses there are 6,700,000 case of PTSD, and 1,640,000
attempted suicides. For substance abuse cases with all substances are
9,000,000. For violence there are 2,500,000 physical assaults, 2,500,000
rapes, and 6,900 murders (Willis, B., Levy, B., 2013, p. 1418).
Due to the children being affected by these statistics it can cause huge problems for if they
become pregnant in these states of health. When sexually active adolescents do not use
contraceptives they have a 90% chance of becoming pregnant within the first year of being
sexually active, and since many girls that are prostituted do not have access to or are not
allowed to use contraceptives, many become pregnant (Willis, B., Levy, B., 2013, p. 1419).
What come along with these pregnancies are many problems for the babies before and
after birth. Such as, 190,080 infant deaths, 237,000 complications of STDs, 249,480 HIV
infections, 54,886 deaths from HIV infections, and 8,316 HBV infections (Willis, B., Levy, B.,
2013, p. 1418). The babies of these children who are prostituted have to start their lives off
with having so many issues and not having the proper start to life. Simply having access to
contraceptives could solve all these problems, but due to the lack of care from the pimps to
their child sex workers there will not always be that access.

In the issue of sex trafficking there are many parts that go into the whole legal set

up. When dealing with a case of a grown woman prostitute, it is obvious that she would get
charged with prostitution but what about in the case of dealing with a minor that was being
trafficked? The answer is that they would still be charged in the United States. Even though
the legal age of consent is 18, when the participant is the age of 16 or 17, he or she would
be charged as an adult. In the cases where a participant may have been forced, that could
be different when looking at the final outcome of the case, whether an adult or a child.
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Dealing with sex trafficking cases can go either way because of the affects of the
participant. In the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale
of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, the topics of child pornography,
consent, transferring of organs for profit, and the obligations to the Convention of the
Rights of the Child are covered under the United States of America, even though the United
States has not ratified the Convention of the Rights of the Child they still have an obligation
to protect their citizens. If all countries all over the world would get on the same terms for
world wide rights, we could probably solve a lot of the issues that are going on, especially
sex trafficking.
Sex trafficking is an issue that could really get even more out of control than it
already is and it needs to be stopped completely. People are putting themselves in
situations every single day that could eventually cause them much more harm than what
they are already self inflicting on themselves. Young lives are out there not receiving the
Human Rights they deserve. This issue is something that will always be around because
there will always be people out there that are willing to take full advantage of helpless
people and there will always be people out there that do not realize their own self-worth. If
we all came together and put a force for Human Rights to be fixed then I believe that there
would be an end to this global crisis. There needs to be something done for it and to start
we can inform people a lot better about the topic. We have to start somewhere.

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References:
Alalehto, T. (2010). Eastern Prostitution from Russia to Sweden and Finland. In Journal of

Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention (1st ed., Vol. 3, pp. P. 96-

111). Routledge.

Cao, L., & Stack, S. (2003). Exploring terra incognita: Family values and prostitution

acceptance in China. Journal of Criminal Justice, P. 531-537.

Gil, V., Wang, M., Anderson, A., Lin, G., & Wu, Z. (1996). Prostitutes, Prostitution and

STD/HIV Transmission in Mainland China. In (1st ed., Vol. 42, pp. P. 141-152). Great

Britian: Pergamon.

Gummow, J. (2013, November 2). 10 Surprising and Counterintuitive Facts About Child

Sex Trafficking. Retrieved October 7, 2014.

Khazan, O. (2013, June 20). A Fascinating Map of the Worst Countries for Modern

Slavery. Retrieved October 2, 2014.

Willis, B., & Levy, B. (2013). Child prostitution: Global health burden, research needs, and

interventions. Public Health, p. 1417-1421.

Sealey, G. (2013, December 13). Exposing America's Ugly Child Sex Secret. Retrieved

October 2, 2014.

Pedersen, W., & Hegna, K. (2003). Children and adolescents who sell sex: A community

study. In Social Science & Medicine (pp. P. 135-147). Pergamon.

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Human Trafficking is a Problem 365 Days a Year | Polaris | Combating Human

Trafficking and Modern-day Slavery. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2014.

Russia, China Among Worst Countries for Human Trafficking. (n.d.). Retrieved

October 2, 2014, from http://www.christianheadlines.com/blog/russia-china-

among-worst-countries-human-trafficking.html

Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2014, from

http://www.veronicasvoice.org/statistics/

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