We all get really busy and many of you are like me: you don’t watch a lot of tv, you’ve had your head buried in the 2010 budget or other planning, and all of a sudden you hear that today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day?   Let me just quickly bring you up to date with the bottom line and bullet points:

• In 2007, January 11th was declared National Human Trafficking Awareness Day
• On January 4th, 2010 President Obama made a Proclaimed January 2010 as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, culminating in the annual celebration of National Freedom Day on February 1.  Here is the Presidential Proclamation: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-proclamation-national-slavery-and-human-trafficking-prevention-month
• You may be thinking..okay, okay..that’s a problem that doesn’t affect me.  What does that have to do with me, or my company?  We’re not involved in any of this.

Yes, you are.  Because this issue is touching someone you know if it isn’t touching you yet.  If you are a parent, you simply cannot ignore this day of remembrance or the issues that brought it about.

• Things to think about:

1. A recent phone call received by someone I know: “Can you help me?  I just found out my daughter is posted on Craig’s list”.  That’s sex trafficking. She didn’t put herself on there.

2. There is no such thing as a child prostitute.  However, there are many prostituted children.  Do you hear the difference?  This is sex trafficking.  No little girl or boy rents herself out at the average age of 11 or 12 to have her body used and abused by as many as 30 creepy men a night.

3. 90% of 6-18 year old boys have viewed pornography on line while doing their homework.  Pornography is an addictive drug acting on the brain by releasing chemicals.

4. Sex trafficking is a highly lucrative cottage industry driven by the Internet.  The #1 destination for sex tourism is the USA. Yes, the United States of America is the “go-to” country for “sex tourism”.  Not what you hear or thought previously, is it?  Why would we show our disgusting dirty secrets to the rest of the world?

5. Prostitution is not the oldest “profession”.  It is the oldest OPPRESSION.  It is slavery. P,lain and simple.  Almost all prostitutes are controlled and sold (rented) by pimps. To their pimps, a prostitute is a commodity.  One that needs to be controlled, psychologically and physically.

6. Pimps call high schools “buffets”. Traffickers love malls, and any place kids hang out.  They are predatory, smart, and brutal.  They attack small rural communities, rich suburbs and urban settings. They are not picky as long as there are children around.  They use other young girls and boys under their control to befriend your children.

7. Your socio-economic position or your neighborhood does not make your daughter (or son) more or less vulnerable.  Straight A students end up sold into pornography and prostitution.

8. Sex trafficking revenue now exceeds weapons smuggling revenue, and is second only to illegal drug revenues.

9. Sex trafficking is a $44 billion (with a B) a year industry. 

10. One in four girls will be sexually attacked before the end of college and there are 569,000 predators roaming our streets. (that we know of)

11. There are enough documented facts to make you hurl, right now, right at your desk.  But I will stop by telling you this is just the tip of the iceberg.

NOW…..you are busy, so let me get to the net, net bottom line.  If you are asking yourself “What can I do?”, I am going to give you the top most important things you can do starting right now.  And you don’t even have to be Liam Neeson to do it. (by the way, that movie was based loosely on the story of William G. (Bill) Hillar, a retired Colonel of the U.S. Army Special Forces. He has served in Asia, the Middle East, and Central and South America, where his diverse training and experiences included tactical counterterrorism, explosive ordinance, emergency medicine and psychological warfare. His military experience led him not only to cross-train and serve with Special Forces from allied countries, but also to advise governments and military organizations in several foreign nations. He holds a B.A. in Psychology, M.A. in Education, a Ph.D)His daughter was abducted and never rescued.  She was tortured and murdered in front of other prostituted slaves as an example, because she tried to get away.)

1. Acknowledge that human trafficking exists in our country, as well as around the globe, and that sex trafficking, (prostitution, stripping and pornography) being the most lucrative industry within the trafficking industry is modern day slavery.

2. Learn the facts about sex trafficking and spread the word to others in your workplace.  I recommend websites of organizations such as www.sharedhope.org and www.RentingLacy.com, where they will send you a book called “Renting Lacy”, written by former U. S. Congresswoman Linda Smith, for a donation of any amount.  Read the book and tell everyone you know to get a copy.  It’s short, to the point, and honest.

3. Pledge not to purchase or participate in pornography, prostitution, or any form of the commercial sex industry.  Hold your friends and co-workers accountable to this pledge as well.  You are only supporting organized crime and making the problem worse.

4. Make sure your company does not have or create a culture of objectifying women. Take a stand against the commercial sex industry.  Know that if you or anyone at your company hires a prostitute and gets caught, the laws are changing, and your company name and your employee’s name will be in the paper, and if there is an underage girl involved, he may end up as a registered sex offender.  Sweden recently mace it illegal to purchase sex.  Within 4 years, their sex trade was cut in half and organizaed crime virtually disappeared.  We are on the path to make buying sex as unacceptable as driving drunk.  This movement is picking up speed.  You or your co-workers do not want to be the example in the newspaper.

5. Take action immediately to protect those you love from this destructive market.  Teach your children how to protect themselves from abduction (I highly recommend dowloading the free video from  www.justyellfire.org ) and/or enrolling them in Martial Arts or self-defense classes.

6. Know where your children are when they are not in school or at home.  Get to know their friends. Ask questions.  Let them know why you need to know their friends names and families.  No more secret lives.  Warning signs of your child being trafficked are phantom boyfriends, coming hiome with gifts, losing weight, and spending more time away from home and school with insufficient or phony explanation.

7.  Get someone to speak to your Service Clubs, Chamber of Commerce, and church. Find someone from one of the organizations that fight sex trafficking to educate your community, etc.  Call me and I can recommend a speaker in your area on this topic, or call the organization and ask for a speaker from their bureau.

8. Teach your daughters they have the right to stand up to someone who is asking them to do something they don’t feel comfortable doing.  Many girls think they need to be polite and compliant. Let them know it’s okay to say NO in a date situation.  Let them know the dangers. 

9. Download the white papers on this topic from the Soroptimists.  www.soroptimist.org

10. Make a donation to an anti-trafficking organization of your choice.  

11. Write your legislators and tell them we need safe protective housing for prostituted children.  Without protection, these chldren will not identify themselves or help us catch their pimps because they are afraid for their lives and the lives of those they love (their families, cats, dogs, friends, etc)  They have been brutalized, and scared to death.  We need safe housing for them in order to prosecute the traffickers. 

Okay, I have given you 11 wake-up facts, and 11 things you can do starting right now.  The rest is up to you. 

Coach Julia

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.