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Children For Sale On Craigslist
Katherine Chon, Executive Director & Co-Founder Polaris ProjectI'm sure most of us are familiar with Craigslist, an online Web community where people post job opportunities, items for sale, and find activity partners. Over the past years, Craigslist has grown by leaps and bounds and now has Web sites representing over 300 U.S. cities. Many of us have used Craigslist to find a garage sale or buy a used couch.
However, despite its millions of users and various social benefits, there's a dark side of Craigslist that most users don't see. In the "Erotic" section, human traffickers have found Craigslist to be one of the most efficient, effective (and free) ways to post children and women for sale.
With a bit of research, one can realize just how much of a problem this has become. In one recent case, two Chicago women were charged for selling girls as young as 14 years old on Craigslist. The girls were forced to have sex with 10-12 men per day, and the traffickers made tens of thousands of dollars. A Boston man and his niece were charged with plotting a child trafficking operation with teenagers as young as 13 by selling them on Craigslist to predators from Massachusetts to New York. These cases are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, law enforcement efforts to fight trafficking nationwide are consistently reporting a spike in online Craigslist ads, and how sex trafficking has "moved online" lately.
In Washington, DC, we see an average of 500 of these such Craigslist ads each new day. Yet, it is important to realize that a significant percentage of these ads on Craigslist do not advertise solely "legal escort services" as Craigslist may like to believe. Instead, a considerable percentage of the ads are a thinly veiled guise for one of the many faces of human trafficking that exists here in the United States. Although Craigslist may convince itself that it has created a beneficial online venue for advertising legal escorts, in effect, what it has done is create a fertile ground for traffickers to further their trade in human misery.
Many of the victims of human trafficking that Polaris Project has served have had their pictures posted on Craigslist. Through serving them, we've learned how the pictures on Craigslist hide the pain behind the smile. Maybe Craigslist should ask itself if the marginal benefits of this form of free advertising for the sex trade are worth the far larger human costs.
Creative Abolitionist: Jail Me, I Ate Slave-Produced Chocolate
A Dutch journalist asked an Amsterdam court on Friday to convict him for eating chocolate, saying by doing so he was benefiting from child slavery on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast.
Teun van de Keuken, 35, is seeking a jail sentence to raise consumer awareness and force the cocoa and chocolate industry to take tougher measures to stamp out child labour.
"If I am found guilty of this crime, any chocolate consumer can be prosecuted after that. I hope that people would stop buying chocolate and thus hurt the sales of big corporations and make them do something about the problem," van de Keuken said.
Ivory Coast, the world's No. 1 cocoa producer which has been racked by instability since a brief 2002 civil war, is the target of allegations by international rights groups that children are working as slaves on its cocoa plantations.
Faith and Action: Rev. Alan Jones Interviews David Batstone
The dean of Grace Cathedral, the Rev. Alan Jones, interviewed David Batstone in a public forum at his church in San Francisco on Sunday, February 11th. In this one-hour audio broadcast, they discussed slavery in the church, how thinly veiled ads promoting sex trafficking can appear in reputable newspapers, and practical steps to becoming a modern-day abolitionist.
Uganda: Churches, bars cited in human trafficking
CHURCHES, agencies, brothels and bar owners have been implicated in human trafficking in Uganda. Rogers Kasirye, the executive director of the Uganda Youth Development Link (UYDEL),
yesterday told MPs that most girls from the age of 14 and above ended up in brothels, bars, hotels or as housemaids.He was testifying before the parliamentary committee on defense and internal affairs, which is scrutinising the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Bill 2007.
He accused Church owners of having several branches in rural areas from where they convince unsuspecting parents to surrender their children at a mere sh10,000. He said poverty in rural areas had left many children helpless.
How China has created a new slave empire in Africa
I think I am probably going to die any minute now. An inflamed, deceived mob of about 50 desperate men are crowding round the car, some trying to turn it over, others beating at it with large rocks, all yelling insults and curses.They have just started to smash the windows. Next, they will pull us out and, well, let's not think about that ...
I am trying not to meet their eyes, but they are staring at me and my companions with rage and hatred such as I haven't seen in a human face before. Those companions, Barbara Jones and Richard van Ryneveld, are - like me - quite helpless in the back seats.
If we get out, we will certainly be beaten to death. If we stay where we are, we will probably be beaten to death.
Our two African companions have - crazily in our view - got out of the car to try to reason with the crowd. It is clear to us that you might as well preach non-violence to a tornado.
At last, after what must have been about 40 seconds but that felt like half an hour, one of the pair saw sense, leapt back into the car and reversed wildly down the rocky, dusty path - leaving his friend behind.By the grace of God we did not slither into the ditch, roll over or burst a tyre. Through the dust we churned up as we fled, we could see our would-be killers running with appalling speed to catch up. There was just time to make a crazy two-point turn which allowed us to go forwards and so out-distance them.
We had pretty much abandoned our other guide to whatever his fate might be (this was surprisingly easy to justify to myself at the time) when we saw that he had broken free and was running with Olympic swiftness, just ahead of pursuers half hidden by the dust.
Project Censored: Not For Sale Featured in Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009
Worldwide Slavery Number 15 Top Story in Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009 Sources: Sojourners, March 15, 2007 Title: “From Sex Workers to Restaurant Workers, the Global Slave Trade Is Growing” Author: David Batstone Twenty-seven million slaves exist in the world today, more than at any time in human history. Globalization, poverty, violence, and greed facilitate the growth of slavery, not only in the Third World, but in the most developed countries as well. Behind the façade in any major town or city in the world today, one is likely to find a thriving commerce in human beings.As many as 800,000 are trafficked across international borders annually, and up to 17,500 new victims are trafficked across US borders each year, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). More than 30,000 additional slaves are transported through the US on their ways to other international destinations. Attorneys from the DOJ have prosecuted ninety-one slave trade cases in cities across the United States and in nearly every state of the nation.
Commerce in human beings today rivals drug trafficking and the illegal arms trade for top criminal activity on the planet. The slave trade sits at number three on the list, but the gap is closing. According to the US State Department’s 2004 Trafficking in Persons Report, the FBI projects that the slave trade generates $9.5 billion in revenue each year. A report put out by the International Labor Office in 2005, titled “Global Alliance Against Forced Labor,” estimates that figure to be closer to $32 billion annually
FBI: Local child-prostitution roundup snares more than 100 in Bay Area
More than 100 people have been arrested throughout the Bay Area as part of a nationwide FBI sting operation targeting child prostitution, an FBI spokesman said Monday.
Arrests were made the past several days in Oakland, Concord, San Jose, Campbell, Morgan Hill, San Mateo, Santa Rosa, San Rafael and San Francisco, FBI spokesman Joe Schadler said. Some children who were forced into prostitution were rescued as part of the operation, Schadler said.
Schadler said further details would be provided at a news conference by FBI and local law enforcement officials at the Oakland Police Department today.
The nationwide sting, called "Operation Cross Country II," was a three-day undercover operation conducted last week, resulting in 642 arrests in 29 cities and the rescue of 47 children.