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Sex Trafficking in America
By Mike McManus
March 16, 2011
Last week Derwin Smith, 42, pled guilty to interstate transportation of a minor to engage in prostitution. The girl, who was only 12, had been picked up by Smith on a Washington street. He paid her for sex in the back seat of his car and recruited her to work for him as a prostitute.
He drove the child to Atlantic City where she was paid to have sex with men over the weekend. She gave him all the money she earned. The child, who had been reported missing, managed to call a relative from the motel. Police arrived, and arrested Smith.
In a plea agreement, he will be sentenced to 121 months in prison.
This is not an isolated story. An estimated 100,000 girls are lured annually into sex trafficking. What's rare is a successful arrest and conviction of a pimp who seduced and raped the pre-teen.
"Many Americans would be shocked to learn that young women and girls are being held against their will to be used for sexual exploitation," said Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council who hosted a live video webcast on sex trafficking this week.
His first guest was Lila Rose, who attracted national attention recently for showing an undercover video of a man posing as a pimp, who asks a New Jersey Planned Parenthood clinic if his underage girls could be given birth control services. He acknowledges that some of his girls are in America illegally.
"Oh yes, we don't require Social Security and will keep things confidential," said the PP manager.
"Cool," responded the "pimp."
Lila Rose angrily added, "Planned Parenthood covers up the sexual abuse of young girls and children. We've hired actors posing as traffickers in seven Planned Parenthood clinics, who lie on the paperwork, and get taxpayer funds for providing birth control to underage sex workers. The biggest abortion chain is collecting $333 million of federal, state and local funds, and says 'We will keep confidential,' the victimization of young girls."
Perkins commented, "There are mandated reporting requirements for the sexual abuse of a child, to immediately protect those girls. We are seeing the exact opposite. Planned Parenthood is covering up abuse and working with abusers."
All federal funding of Planned Parenthood should be yanked. Prosecutors should conduct their own sting operations, arresting those guilty of child abuse - whether they are pimps like Derwin Smith or Planned Parenthood accomplices.
Is sexual trafficking happening in your city?
Do you have strip clubs, escort services or massage parlors? Then you have sex traffickers who procure the girls for the work. At what age are girls recruited? Tina Frundt told Perkins she was recruited at age 13, and spent a year and a half in jail before age 16. "Children are easily manipulated, especially if they have only one parent," she asserts
She created CourtneyHouse.org which has given 500 prostituted girls a second chance. Or you might go to SharedHopeInternational.org which has videotaped real pimps offering 14-year-old girls for $300. "They are selling our children for sex, and what's terrifying is that people are buying it, knowing that it is a child."
Why do men break a taboo and go to a child prostitute?
"Hard core pornography breaks down inhibitions. A steady consumption of porn desensitizes. It gives young men a training manual on how they will treat women," asserted Pat Trueman on the Family Research Council webinar. He should know as the former director of obscenity prosecution for the Justice Department and now director of Morality in Media.
Perkins commented, "We are told it is a harmless crime."
Not to the girls who think their worth is measured by how sexy they are, who are lured into a life of prostitution with endless men, often ending up in drugs or alcoholism.
Nor is it harmless to the men. Two Scriptures come to mind:
Proverbs 6:27: "Can a man scoop fire into his lap without being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched? So is he who sleeps with another man's wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished."
Experienced therapists tell me that half of all divorces stem in part from an addiction to pornography.
Jesus himself predicted it: "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
What's tragic is that the Obama Administration has decided to stop prosecuting obscenity. It has shut down Pat Trueman's former office.
Remember that the next time Obama says he's concerned about America's children.
----Michael J. McManus is a syndicated columnist writing on "Ethics & Religion". He is President & Co-Chair of Marriage Savers. He lives in Potomac, MD. His website can be accessed here: www.marriagesavers.org
