Sex Trafficking in the US

To: The U.S. Congress

We the undersigned are asking our Government to act upon the problem of sex trafficking in the United States as reported by the New York Times on Jan. 25th, 2004. The report states that government officials have officially accepted the problem to be in the ten thousands of people trafficked every year and unofficially admitted to the problem to be much greater, between 100,000 and 200,000 sex slaves trafficked into the US every year.
The journalist, Peter Landesman who prepared the report, was featured on the National Public Radio program Fresh Air on Jan. 26th, 2004. The details of the report are appalling and indicate a wide market for this gratuitous evil that is growing all too fast within our own country.
Women and children are often lured or bought into these rings from around the globe with promises of a better life abroad. They are then flown into bordering counties like Mexico where they are trained to become sex slaves and subjected to utmost cruelty. These victims are then illegally brought across the borders into the US, where they are placed in the hands of well paying clients who hold them in captivity to use and abuse them at their own free will. These women and childrens lives are threatened, as well as the lives of their immediate families in their home countries allowing them no recourse to the law.
One of the other horrifying aspects mentioned in the report was that children are often traded in public places like the Disney World, as it is the perfect cover for such operations. There is no justification to deny this problem happening in our own backyards. We ask that our government take steps to deal with this issue as an immediate law enforcement problem, one that destroys young lives and eventually those of all who partake in it. We also ask those who wish to better educate themselves on the gravity of the issue to listen to the interview on NPR at:
http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&todayDate=01/26/2004

Sincerely,

The undersigned