June 2011 – “All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players,” Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It. At any given moment, real-life dramas are playing out across every continent, country and city. The tragic drama of child sex trafficking spans the globe, even to Small Town, USA.

Unlike Shakespeare’s works that have definite beginnings, middles and ends, human trafficking experiences new beginnings every day, is constantly in the middle of its battles and may never end.

In all plays, there are different roles the characters must fill. The drama of human trafficking is no exception.

The victim
Natalie,* a nine-year-old girl, loved school. The only part she didn’t like about school was going home. Her mom was different before she started going to school. Now she spent hours alone in her bedroom leaving Natalie to fend for herself. Natalie once made the mistake of opening her mother’s door, seeing her sitting on the floor, her head laid against the bed with her eyes shut and a needle in her arm, Natalie silently closed the door, acting as if she had seen nothing.

Natalie’s mom began disappearing more frequently. One day, Natalie came home to see a stranger sitting with her mom on the couch. Her mother looked like a ghost. She said she couldn’t take care of Natalie anymore and this man would give her a better life. She said he would take care of her. Cliff grabbed Natalie’s arm and, while she protested, forced her into his car. Natalie begged her mother to keep her. She kept saying that she could be a good girl, a better daughter. Before they left, she saw Cliff give her mom a wrinkled brown sack of what she later learned was heroin. Natalie had just become the prostituted child of a pedophile.

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Tina Frundt, a survivor of the sex trade industry and founder of Courtney’s House, said, “The average prostituted child in the U.S., girl or boy, can be African American, Caucasian, Asian America and all ages. The reality is that the victim can be anyone, anywhere. It really doesn’t come down to race, age or socioeconomic standing. It comes down to anyone who can be manipulated by someone else.”

Frundt has all the statistics to back her up. Right now, in the U.S., there are over 100,000 underage children in the sex industry.

The victim of sex trafficking goes through several phases. If a pimp is looking for a very young child to traffic, he will often scout local playgrounds, schoolyards or malls. As any pedophile does, he will then lock on to one target.

Without the child realizing any danger, the pimp will spend days, weeks or months cultivating a relationship. One day he is just talking. Another he just happens to have an extra ice cream cone. Another day he says he has something for her in his car. When the door shuts, the victimization begins.

According to a study by the Polaris Project, an international organization that has the desire for “a world without slavery,” these children are initiated into prostitution by being beaten; watching as personal items are burned to instill a sense of hopelessness; being raped or gang raped; being placed in a closet, trunk or other confined space for a length of time and forced to watch pornography to know how to do it.

Pimps give them nicknames to erase any connection to who they were and will move them to unfamiliar territory to increase the feeling of helplessness and loneliness.

The victim is further humiliated by being forced to perform sex acts on camera. This brings the pimps more money as the videos are then sold for pornographic Web sites and DVDs.

The villain
Four years later, Natalie could still remember the first few months. She was forced to perform sexual acts with men several times a day. It only took the first week for her to learn what a quota was and what happened if she didn’t meet it. There were no excuses. You didn’t come home until the quota was met. Cliff made sure everyone understood his expectation when he beat one girl so badly Natalie still had nightmares about it.

Some nights Cliff would be on the streets with the girls. He would find the customers and tell a girl the hotel and room number. Other times, Cliff would network with other pimps if they didn’t have the right kind of girl for a guy. If a buyer wanted a girl younger than the pimp had, he would talk to another pimp and they would split the fee. One night someone wanted a 13-year-old. Cliff got Natalie.

Natalie was sent via taxi to an upscale hotel. Upon arrival, she headed directly to the elevator without making eye contact with anyone. She often met CEOs, doctors, lawyers or businessmen who were in town for a conference. Titles didn’t matter to her because she only knew them as pedophiles. Most of the time in hotels like this, the transactions went as planned. This time it didn’t

As soon as she walked into the room she knew the customer was high. He reminded her of her mom. She closed the door just before he attacked her. She tried to defend herself but it was futile. She then did what she always did – mentally turn herself off until everything was over. When it was over and he passed out, she walked outside and hailed the cab that would take her home. It wasn’t until she got in the car that she realized she had forgotten to get the money.

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Unlike the old movie villains who were easily identified, traffickers don’t wear black hats. Frundt said, “Anyone can be a pimp. Several of our girls were trafficked by family members or manipulative boyfriends.”

Lisa Thompson, Liaison for the Abolition of Sexual Trafficking with the Salvation Army, described villains in broader terms. “Villains are those who create pull,” she said. “They create a vacuum that sucks people into this vortex of trafficking. Several categories of people comprise that role: traffickers who meet the demand, buyers who create the demand and pop culture that encourages the demand.”

Culture has incorrectly highlighted the pimp as the creator of the sex trafficking problem in the U.S. Thompson points out, “The buyers are the people at the heart of the problem. If men stopped buying sex today, there wouldn’t be sex trafficking tomorrow. The real driver is the male sex buyer.”

But there is another villain who does not touch the girls, nor does he give money to the pimps. However, he does view the pimp’s girls online. Many pimps videotape girls in sexual acts and sell the videos to Web sites or force girls to perform on Webcam. While he may not physically or directly support the sex trafficking industry, he is fueling the demand. And when demand grows, supply will grow with it.

The facilitator
Natalie was scared to go back to Cliff. She didn’t want to tell him she forgot the money. She also didn’t want to go back to the hotel. Even if she did, there was no way for her to get back in the room. Then, she knew what she had to do. She asked the cab driver to take her just outside town.

The cab driver made it clear he would not take her anywhere but where Cliff said. Cliff paid him extra to transport girls with no questions. If he didn’t bring one back, Cliff would simply find another taxi driver.

Natalie began to wonder who else Cliff had paid off or influenced. She wondered why no one in the hotel had stopped a young girl with bruises and blood all over her from running out the door and into a waiting cab. She wondered how many men had seen the video Cliff sold to a pedophile network on the Internet.

She wondered about all the people around her who had the power to rescue her but instead turned a blind eye. She wondered if it weren’t for sex, would people even see her at all?

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The classic role of the facilitator is the character who doesn’t get his hands dirty, but doesn’t discourage the villain from completing his plan either. Consider Pontius Pilot. He did not dirty his hands by inciting a riot or making false claims about Jesus. However, he is just as guilty. His unwillingness to stand caused an innocent’s death. The facilitators today are numerous, and they are just as guilty as traffickers.

Robert Peters with Morality in Media identified many facilitators. He has spent years studying one of the biggest. “Mainstream popular culture may or may not glamorize pornography and prostitution,” Peters said. “But more often than not, it treats both as non-issues. Pop culture does not condemn it and sometimes treats pornography and prostitution as a normal part of life.”

Thompson has worked directly with trafficking survivors and says the impact of pop culture is profound. “We have to fight the pornography industry and the hypersexualization of culture. Porn and culture are grooming girls to see themselves as sexual objects. It also decreases their inhibitions toward the sex industry. When it comes to males, pop culture is spoon feeding them sexual images and grooming them to be future consumers.”

Nicole Wood with FAAST, Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking, recognizes the responsibility of pop culture, but cannot stop there. She said, “Pop culture does play a role, but cannot bear all the guilt. Yes, some sinister aspects of our culture have become normalized. But there is something to be said about the role of the family and church and the unity that is not there anymore. The fight has to start at home and that is where we should be focusing.”

Thompson also applies the facilitator role to specific characters. “Many industries are profiting from trafficking whether they are aware of it or not. The hotel industry is a great example.

“You also have taxi drivers, strip club owners and some bar owners who are responsible for driving girls to the hotels, paying pimps so they can always have cheap dancers and even providing rooms for prostitution.”

The rescuer
Another three years, another four cities. Natalie had given up all hope of being rescued. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be rescued. She thought she loved Cliff. Besides, there was nothing left to rescue. She felt dead. She looked dead. Cliff made sure all the girls stayed skinny so he could charge top dollar. Some days he would allow them to eat only a candy bar and a can of soda.

She was a 16-year-old with a rap sheet as long as her arm that was now scarred by the drugs Cliff forced into her body. She had been arrested a few times. Every time she was released, she went back to Cliff. One night in Atlanta, local cops raided the place in which they were conducting business. It would be her last arrest.

An officer asked how long she had been in prostitution. She asked why it mattered. She didn’t trust police, she didn’t trust anyone. He handed Natalie a card with a number on it. It was a hotline run by people who had walked in her shoes.

After weeks of talking to someone who became a friend, Natalie entered a group home for survivors. She wanted to go back to Cliff. However, rescuers call that traumatic bonding. They told Natalie it wasn’t true love, but she didn’t believe them. Eventually, she knew staying in the group home and going through the healing process was the best thing for her.

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While there are several rescue organizations, there is one organization that should be much more active than it is: the church. It is time for the church to step up and fight not only outside its walls, but also inside. Wood said, “The church, historically, has not done a good job of talking about sexuality and pornography. The truth is, if we are not dealing with these issues in our churches, how can we welcome the victim we claim we want to help?”

The question is what role will you play? Will you sit idly by as victim after victim is stolen, ripped from the arms of their families and communities? Will you allow your community to be victimized by cowardly pedophiles who prey on the young and the weak? Will you decide today to take center stage and fight the villains and be someone’s hero today?

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It took years of counseling before Natalie was ready to reenter society. The organization she was with helped her get an education and a job. During that time she continued living in her group home for survivors.

Years later she became a rescuer. After a particularly long day at work, Natalie walked home with a friend. Her friend asked why she worked so hard. She answered, “If not me, then who?”  

*Natalie is a composite character created to illustrate this story.

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Rescuers
Courtney’s House 
Offers a hotline run by survivors for those still trapped
Offers emergency housing while they develop an individual program of trauma recovery
Has emergency homes across the country for girls to be in a loving, home environment
www.courtneyshouse.org 202-276-4487 [email protected]

FAAST International
Developed curriculum with Salvation Army called Hands that Heal, for churches and organizations that want to fight trafficking and slavery
Networks with organizations to develop new rescue methods and ways to fight slavery and trafficking
www.faastinternational.org 855-33-FAAST (32278) [email protected]

The Salvation Army
Conducts street rescue operations
Developed curriculum called The Salvation Army Anti-Trafficking Training Manual to educate churches and communities about trafficking
Sponsors a weekend for prayer and fasting every September
www.salvationarmyusa.org [email protected]army.org

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JOIN THE FIGHT
• Pray for those trafficked, those trafficking, those buying and those rescuing.
• Educate yourself.
• Learn to identify “at risk” children.
• Serve as a volunteer for rescue organizations.
• Be conscious of purchasing Fair Trade products.
• Support organizations who focus on fighting trafficking.
• Have a zero-tolerance commitment to the normalization of commercial sex.