Young Children Forced Into Prostitution
Young children forced into a world of prostitution Web Posted: 11/11/2005 02:47 AM CST Brandy Ralston KENS 5 Eyewitness News A young girl, just 6 years old, forced into prostitution. Another who's 7 has lived in a brothel for three years. It may sound hard to believe, but each year more than a million children are sold as sex slaves. In a KENS 5 I-Team investigation, Brandy Ralston discovered some of them are trafficked right through San Antonio. “There's almost no country in the world that's immune from this crime. It's one of the three largest profit-making criminal activities of organized crime around the world,” spokeswoman for the International Justice Mission Sharon Cohn said. They are the children, the innocent victims that groups like International Justice Mission are trying to save. “International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that rescues victims of violence, oppression, sexual exploitations and slavery,” Cohn said. “I remember a girl who said through a translator, ‘Thank you very much for rescuing me.” She's helped rescue young girls all around the globe who have been sold by their families, kidnapped, or gone on their own with the promise of a better life. “The youngest girls we've ever rescued were in Cambodia, where we rescued about 10 girls under the age of 10 who were being sold primarily to Western pedophiles who traveled to Cambodia specifically for the purpose of having sex with young children,” Cohn said. “These are crimes against children, the most vulnerable members of our society, and they're going to be protected by the U.S. government,” said San Antonio division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Al Peña. He says the U.S. passed the protection act in 2003 to cut down on what they call sex tourism. Already, there have been 12 cases of men arrested and accused of traveling to foreign countries to have sex with children. “We'll go after you no matter where you go commit your offenses. The U.S. government will pursue you and bring you to justice,” Peña said. But unfortunately, Peña says, his agents don't have to look far to find young women being sold into prostitution. “San Antonio sometimes will play as a staging area. These women arrive here and they're forced into prostitution. They're forced into living conditions where they have no freedom to go where They want to go. They're watched all the time. They're guarded. They're forced to commit acts, these sexual acts, night after night, day after day, repeatedly,” Peña said. ICE agents have busted up safe houses in South Texas and across the country, arresting the men and women in charge. “You're going to pay a price. It's not just going to be a slap on the wrist,” Peña said. The people making sure these smugglers face the maximum punishment here and abroad are people like San Antonio attorney Larry Warren. “I had been praying for a long time for some type of mission work that I could be involved in.” That's when he became involved with International Justice Mission and was quickly put to work. “I found myself in August of 2003 going to South Asia, investigating slavery. We went under cover, and we posed as if we were you guys. We posed as a documentary film team and filmed slavery,” Warren said The victims these times were young boys, not forced into prostitution, but slave labor. “As a result of that investigation, approximately 80 slaves were freed.” Warren said. To date, Warren and others at IJM have helped free countless numbers of children, whether they're being used as slave labor or as prostitutes. They have no doubt that the work they're doing is making a difference. “We have a firm conviction that this is one of those crimes that can absolutely be crushed,” Even though it's really ugly, the victims who suffer from it are more than worth the challenges of it,” Cohn said. While there's no way to tell exactly how many young women and children have been trafficked through our border and San Antonio, ICE agents say they're starting to see enhanced penalties for the smugglers who are caught. And they say that sends a message that the U.S. is not going to stand for this. http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA111105.kens.4b9d23cb.html