Michelle Speed
Sex Exploitation/Human Trafficking Speech
Mr. Cox
P4
11/8/15

"They forced me to sleep with as many as 50 customers a day. I had to give [the pimp] all my money. If I did not [earn a set amount] they punished me by removing my clothes and beating me with a stick until I fainted, electrocuting me, cutting me.", says a sex trafficking survivor from Cambodia according to equalitynow.org
The 13th Amendment states," Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States, or any other place subject to jurisdiction.", Though this amendment is an important one, this basic right to freedom is still violated by so many today.
Human trafficking is the trading or transporting of people for the purpose of work. This modern day slavery brings just about thirty-two billion dollars annually. Very few people realize that this occurs right in front of us everyday. So many young people are taken from their average lives and forced into slavery for sexual purposes. Girls and women make up ninty-eight percent of sex exploitation in human trafficking alone. Before, victims were teens left alone or run aways, now most victims are from a “caring” family who happened to be pulled in by an experienced predator. ABC news quotes FBI Deputy Assistant Director, Chip Burrus, “These predators are particularly adept at reading children, at reading kids, and knowing what their vulnerabilities are. What you can see, time and time again, is that they will adapt their means to whatever the young people are doing—whether it’s malls, whether it’s ski slopes, whether it’s beaches. Predators are going to do everything in their power to try and convince young girls, young boys, to come with them and enter this particular lifestyle”. Debbie was fifteen years old when she was kidnapped