Sex trafficking happens here

Around Super Bowl weekend, a law enforcement task force made 133 local arrests, most involving prostitution, including that of minors.

Sex and human trafficking have been hitting all-time highs in recent years, earning the industry as a whole $32 billion a year, according to the United Nations, more than most Fortune 500 companies make. Many believe that human trafficking will replace drug trafficking as the largest criminal activity in the world within the next two years.

In an age when most believe human rights have won out and that slavery is over, many are ignorant  to the fact that there are still slaves in America — sex slaves.

And what’s worse, children 17 and younger are most often the ones suffering.

About 100,000-300,000 U.S. children are forced into prostitution and sexual slavery every year for profit, according to the National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking.

Children make up half of all human trafficking.

Traffick911, a group based in Fort Worth, said the average age of sex-trafficked children is 12-15 years old, but younger children are trafficked as well.

The group says the average life expectancy of a child in slavery is about 7 years.

During their servitude, they are often gang-raped, beaten, starved, branded and stored in cages when they’re not being used by one “john” after another.

“One little girl finally told her captor to just kill her — she couldn’t do it anymore. The pimp refused, telling her he makes too much money off her. If she wouldn’t do what he told her to, he would kidnap her 8-year-old little sister and pour battery acid over her face while she watched. The little girl complied, living in a dog cage when she wasn’t being sold to man after man,” a story on Traffick911.com said.

The scariest thing about this? It happens in our own backyard.

With 6 million residents, Dallas/Fort Worth is home to countless homeless children who are picked up off the street from one hell and thrown into another.

But it’s not just the homeless.

Love146, a group protesting human trafficking, created a video showing a young woman being wooed by a handsome young man, and she begins to fall in love with him. Everyone in her life likes him, and the young man plans a trip overseas for himself and the young woman. When they arrive, he sells her to a pimp and boards another plane.

This is not a happily-ever-after tale, but it is true. This is an injustice, and it needs to be stopped.

With hundreds of thousands of children being sold, Americans need to take action against this. If you suspect someone may be victimized, call either 911 or the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888.