Sexual slavery has existed for ages. It's not a new problem, but it is an increasing problem. In this article entitled Global Shame: Sex Slavery In The Liberal Age on IslamOnline.net it states:
"There is hardly any region in the world that escapes the activities of sex slavery syndicates. Trafficking in women is reported in Africa, Europe, North America, South Asia, and East and Southeast Asia.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), a European Union agency, estimates that some 500,000 women were trafficked to Europe in 1995. A large number of the women and girls involved came from the impoverished East European countries of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus."
The problem is not limited to women,
It's not just increasing in other countries,
but it's also increasing right here in the dear old U.S. of A.
Sexual slavery has been on the increase since Al Gore invented the internet (*smirk*). According to this article:
"Prior to the internet, human traffickers had to travel within the United States or abroad to secure purchasing of females for sex slavery. However, with the growth of the internet, human trafficking is now being conducted via telephone and satellite transmissions. (AFA Journal, 2004). Human trafficking is now possible by viewing images of potential girls, bidding on the internet and paying for via the internet. With the decrease in travel and being anonymous on the internet, it is now possible for more human trafficking transaction to occur for purchasing internet sex slaves.
Even though prostitution and sexual exploitation of persons is illegal in the United States, the penalties are minimal for human traffickers. The majority of crimes for sexual exploitation are not felony sentences and carry significantly low criminal and court fees in comparison to the profits being obtained from this industry. Stiffer penalties could decrease the number of people in the internet slave industry over an extended period of time."
There has been a lot of police effort recently to try to clean up the sex slave trade in Houston, but it still exists. See these articles, for instance:
In one case, an ex-policeman was involved:
Sex Slave Ring Busted in Houston, Ex-Police Officer and 5 Others Charged
It's also increasing in Israel:
Sex slavery and Israel’s failure to fight the growing trade
The criminals will use any means at their disposal including offering women fortune and fame, kidnapping them and injecting them with drugs, locking them in closets, beating them, and repeatedly raping them, making threats against their families and loved ones, or any number of things that their sick, twisted, greedy minds can imagine.
As stated in the article in the link above the preceding paragraph:
"Most of these sex slaves are kept by their masters until their commercial value deteriorates as a result of their deteriorating health conditions with the advancement of the many sexual diseases they are exposed to, including HIV and AIDS. Sadly, the end of their conditions of slavery does not signal the end of their miseries, but the beginning of a life of poverty, illness, and shame."
Human trafficking is a huge problem. According to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, between 600,000 and 800,000 are trafficked internationally, with as many as 17,500 people trafficked into the United States.
Reward Processing by the Opioid System in the Brain
Julie Le Merrer, Jérôme A. J. Becker, Katia Befort and Brigitte L. Kieffer
Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, Département Neurobiologie et Génétique; Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U964; and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique UMR7104, Illkirch; and Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France
The opioid system consists of three receptors, mu, delta, and kappa, which are activated by endogenous opioid peptides processed from three protein precursors, proopiomelanocortin, proenkephalin, and prodynorphin. Opioid receptors are recruited in response to natural rewarding stimuli and drugs of abuse, and both endogenous opioids and their receptors are modified as addiction develops. Mechanisms whereby aberrant activation and modifications of the opioid system contribute to drug craving and relapse remain to be clarified. This review summarizes our present knowledge on brain sites where the endogenous opioid system controls hedonic responses and is modified in response to drugs of abuse in the rodent brain. We review 1) the latest data on the anatomy of the opioid system, 2) the consequences of local intracerebral pharmacological manipulation of the opioid system on reinforced behaviors, 3) the consequences of gene knockout on reinforced behaviors and drug dependence, and 4) the consequences of chronic exposure to drugs of abuse on expression levels of opioid system genes. Future studies will establish key molecular actors of the system and neural sites where opioid peptides and receptors contribute to the onset of addictive disorders. Combined with data from human and nonhuman primate (not reviewed here), research in this extremely active field has implications both for our understanding of the biology of addiction and for therapeutic interventions to treat the disorder.
Since opiates control the endogenous opioid system controls hedonic responses, this is why so many sex slavers use them to addict their prey. Drugs such as morphine and heroin have long been used. Cocaine and crack have also been used increasingly. Alcohol has been used as well.
Once you recover someone from the sex trade, the job isn't over. You have to consider the amount of time it takes to overcome severe addiction. Not eveyrone can afford to spend six months to a year in a psych ward to overcome their addictions. It may be necessary in some cases where the patients can't bring themselves to change their group of friends or their lifestyle. I can see how spending six months to a year might be long enough for addict friends to go off and find someone else with which to associate or the slave traders to forget as they go on to capture new victims.
Losing their "friends" makes it emotionally difficult for those who want to get free of their addictions to drugs and sex. In dealing with some of the victims, I heard of some of them complain about how all their friends abandoned them by the time they got out.
It seems that in a lot of cases, what binds the people together in such "friendships" is the use of the substance itself. Other than that, they often don't really have much in common. That's the reason their "friends" so easily abandon them, especially if they're wanting to continue using.
If you think sex slavery is glamorous and thrilling, you might want to listen to this young woman, 18, who was kidnapped, drugged, gang-raped and savagely beaten:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27098382#27098382It's not just males seeking out victims. The slave traders sometimes entice some of their victims, yes, even females, to act as lures to draw more into the trade.This online book by David A.J. Richards points out some of the complexities of the laws around the sex and drug trade. Clearly, though, the laws against the slave traders are not nearly severe enough. In Australia, elements of the Australian sex industry opposed the federal government's slavery legislation which they claimed was part of a moral agenda. The legislation, which would create a maximum 25-year jail sentence. At least in Texas the defendants, as in this case, face the possibility of the maximum sentence of life in prison.Twenty five years should be a minimum rather than a maximum when you consider what they do to their victims' lives. Can you imagine having to go through life with the shame of having been a sex slave or having to deal with the effects of sexually transmitted diseases? In the case of HIV and AIDS, it's a life sentence for their victims. Why shouldn't they receive the same?Cal Jennings Copyright © 2009 Cal Jennings
