The Reality of Human Trafficking Amid the Fantasy World of Porn

by Lena Dering and David Litwin

I’d like to share with you a story I recently read.

It wasn’t some fairytale fantasy about romance and chivalry. Instead, it was a nightmarish and gut-wrenching account of Human Trafficking. The main character in the story was Rosa, a 13-year old Mexican girl serving tables in a restaurant that heard from a friend that in the US she could make 10 times more doing the same kind of job. She was very excited about the potential for more money, and was enamored by the glamorous aspects of the United States, so she agreed to go. But when she arrived in the United States, there was no restaurant job waiting for her. Instead, she was forced to work in a makeshift trailer park brothel and sexually serve up to 10 men a day, forced to cater to their every debase desire and subjected to routine beatings and verbal abuse and coercion.

On the weekends she would have up to as many as 30 clients. She was gang raped, beaten up, twice impregnated and twice forced to have an abortion. After both abortions, she was forced back into the brothel, working again the very next day. There’s sliver lining to this story, but it’s razor thin.

For Rosa was one of the lucky ones. The police raided the brothel, arrested the perpetrators and freed the young and once-innocent little girls. But by the time she was rescued, she had several STDs; numerous broken bones that hadn’t healed properly from the beatings; pelvic inflammatory disease and scar tissue from the forced abortions, and other physical maladies. She was addicted to drugs and alcohol and was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, including nightmares, flashbacks, depression, and suicidal tendencies. In short, she was physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually broken (4). This story is a typical scenario for a person who has been “trafficked” for sexual services. Those that are accosted and forced into this “business,” like this little Mexican girl, no longer believe in the fairy tales about romance and chivalry any longer…

Human Trafficking is modern day slavery. It is the second largest criminal industry in the world today after drug dealing – but it is the fastest growing (1). According to the UN, human trafficking is an $8 to $10 billion business.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimates that approximately 1,200,000 victims annually are trafficked across international borders worldwide. Between 50,000 and 100,000 women are trafficked into the United States each year(2). Analysts from the U.S. Department of State suggest that a relatively equal number of trafficked women come from four main areas: Asia, Central and South America, Russia and the newly independent states, and Eastern Europe(3).

There are two kinds of trafficking – “Sex slavery” and “Forced Labor”. Both are horrible crimes against humanity. And the problem of Human Trafficking doesn’t have borders and nationality. It is a problem around the world. People who have money buy other people who are poor and can’t protect themselves. Most of the western countries are proclaiming the “freedom” and democracy that they have, yet they are enslaving others.

Many of children in Asia are being sold into slavery by their own parents or other family members. Sometimes those parents think that by selling their children they are actually giving them a ticket into the future. But in reality, those children become slaves for some wealthy person who is using them whenever and however he wants to. He owns them. They are his property. It is a lie. Article 4 of the UN Universal Declaration of human rights states: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” And we know that all men, women and children are made in the image of God; there is none that can be demeaned or enslaved; for we all bear God’s image; whether we recognize Him or not.

But we must be aware, that this grossly horrific “business” has been fueled by demand. This true and ghastly slave trade propagated by men and women whose sexual appetites have grown so perverted that the paid prostitutes will no longer acquiesce to their degrading and violent requests, and therefore, as intentionally debase as it sounds, they seek alternate sources. And how did these appetites spiral so far out of control? Too often we tend to read statistics such as these and compartmentalize the final debase behavior outside of the initial “harmless” actions. Human Trafficking and Sexual Predators are bad, but pornography is enlivening, fun and harmless; get the picture? Instead we must understand that, though there are exceptions, the debase sexual predator has been conditioned to become what they are, slowly, over time; it is not a term that references a continual absolute, despite how our media centers portray it. Men and women aren’t born sexual predators; they are nurtured. And they need the right sexual sustenance to get there. Notice the pathway of destruction that progressively materializes through the following four quotes from completely separate articles in the mainstream media and clinical circles:

“15 percent of online porn habits develop sexual behavior that disrupts their lives”
The Porn Factor, Pamela Paul. www.time.com. 19 January, 2004.

“Anything that makes people feel anonymous makes them more likely to act impulsively or to act on things that are deviant or they otherwise wouldn’t do.” Dr Englander (Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts) also says, “They may find that they need to do more and more to get the same feeling.”
http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=44120

“Such material helps to normalise pathological behaviour, giving rise to the belief that “it is common, hurts no one, and is socially acceptable, the female body is for male entertainment, sex is not about intimacy and sex is the basis of self-esteem”. And as with any addiction, Layden (a psychotherapist from the University of Pennsylvania) says, the more pornography is consumed, the more the appetite grows…”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/miranda-devine/the-problem-with-pornography/2005/08/13/1123353539758.html

“The internet just happens to provide many of the things sex addicts seek all in one place; isolation, secrecy, fantasy material, endless varieties, around the clock availability, and instant accessibility. Sex addicts on the internet often experience a rapid progression of their addiction. They eventually move to more extreme behavior with taking greater risks…”
http://allpsych.com/journal/sexaddiction.html

We can draw two conclusions from the rise in Human Trafficking and the reality that demand fuels supply: 1. Many more people than we realized five and ten years ago are highly perverted and debase sexual predators by nature and pornography has helped cause them to “come out,” so to speak. Or, 2. Pornography is a slippery slope that continues to evolve and mutate, and its “ever-diminishing pleasure, for its ever-increasing desire” formula causes normal, everyday people to turn into sexual predators and become so blinded to their addiction and so fueled by the physical need that they are willing to force themselves sexually on the underaged. Either way, the results are cataclysmic. Either way, the safe fantasy world of porn is anything but fantasy and anything but safe when “the more pornography is consumed, the more the appetite grows…” But I’ll let an expert make that conclusion:

“Layden… has testified before the US Senate on the dangers of online porn, gleaned from her experience treating sexual violence victims and perpetrators for 20 years. “I didn’t have one case of sexual violence that didn’t involve pornography,” she said.”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/miranda-devine/the-problem-with-pornography/2005/08/13/1123353539758.html

The secular world seeks a disconnect between porn and the sexual predator; porn and the child pornographer; porn and the rising epidemic of human trafficking – but there is none to be found. We must wake up and realize that our desire to repress and throw off the supposed “shackles” of God’s dogmatic standards, is actually distancing mankind from the protection that the Creator has attempted to offer His image – for we are all made in that image, be us atheist, Christian, porn user, or even child pornographer. In fact, that’s the strategy, distance yourself from God, and you strip away the value of your image. Distance yourself from God’s law, and you begin to assess standards and desires through your own faulty and corrosive lens. Distance yourself from God and more than spiritual destruction is inevitable. Proverbs says that the wicked, “lie in wait for their own blood, they ambush their own lives.” (Pr 1:18) But it also says that their path is “deep darkness, they do not know over what they stumble.” It is time to take the blinders off and begin to look at the world that we have now inherited after our embrace of sexual freedom and our wholesale acceptance of ubiquitous and chronic pornography, and begin to realize that is the enemy that is keeping us in shackles, not God. Or maybe, we’re arrogant enough to say we’re not shackled… yet. Okay, then it’s keeping girls like Rosa shackled, and hundreds of thousands of others like her. And as the appetite grows and the demand increases, it may tragically accost and shackle someone you love.

Thankfully we serve a God that intervenes even when man does not. Psalm 12:5 says: “Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise,” says the LORD. “I will protect them from those who malign them.” Dan Haseltine, frontman for the Grammy Award-winning band, Jars of Clay said once in an interview, “If you think clean water, or sex trafficking is an issue that is important to you, seek out information, and find people who are involved. Find out what it looks like, what it feels like. Begin a conversation over the dinner table. The biggest problem is that people don’t talk about these problems.” Communication is key, but so is prayer. Prayer moves in areas we cannot. Prayer finds girls like Rosa and rescues them. Prayer stops child-pornographers from continuing the broadcasting of their websites. Prayer thwarts the attempts of kidnappers. Prayer accomplishes what we cannot.

And we must come clean of our own contribution in the pornographic assualt. We must realize that even our own “innocent” pornographic dabbling (an oxymoron, believe me) has fueled these tragic and alarming issues such as child pornography, trafficking and sexual predators. We cannot claim innocence, but we can fall on the One who took all sin for us. Otherwise, we are left in a hopeless state of despair; to which the only thing we can do is run back to fantasy for escape; and in doing so, the cycle continues…

1 http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/about/fact_human.html
2 http://www.tinystars.org/home.html
3 http://www.blogger.com/start
4 http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/rm/2005/48309.htm