After graduating from school in Chisinau, the capital of the decrepit former Soviet Republic of Moldova, Victoria faced a bleak future with no employment opportunities and no money. So it makes sense that she jumped at the suggestion of a friend to drive southeast with him to Turkey to find work at a factory.
Victoria realized something was amiss when she noticed they were headed west, to Serbia. At the border, her "friend" handed her to a group of Serb men who raped her and sent her to Bosnia, where she was bought and sold 10 times over a two-year period by various brothel owners who forced her into a life of prostitution.
Appalling, isn't it? Yet what may be even more horrific is that this isn't just happening in the impoverished, war-torn nations of the Third World. It is happening here, in the United States, and maybe even in our neighborhoods. The State Department estimates that every year 20,000 humans are sold in the United States as slaves.
In New Jersey, a sex slavery operation was busted for conning Mexican girls into crossing the border with promises of marriage and then selling them into $35-per-customer brothels. In Florida, agents found a brothel using girls as young as 13. In Atlanta, a ring was found to have imported 1,000 Asian women.
On a worldwide scale, more than 700,000 people live each day in the perpetual horror of forced servitude. International aid organizations tackle the issue by sending groups into problem areas to educate locals on the tactics commonly used by traffickers. The worldwide explosion of sex slavery has been addressed by recent high-profile articles in The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic and Vanity Fair, but the enormity and scale of human trafficking defies traditional means of prosecution.
For one, human trafficking is an international issue requiring an international force. Yet the U.N.'s own International Police Task Force has also been accused of participation in human trafficking in Eastern Europe. Peacekeepers in Bosnia shut down some brothels and visited others for the services of sex-slaves.
The U.N. estimates that worldwide, human trafficking is a $7-billion-a-year industry.
This trade in human flesh is absolutely disgusting. Enticed with the dreams of leading a good life, thousands of women and girls wake to find themselves confined in whorehouses. And it goes on, like so many atrocities, under our very noses. The brothels in New Jersey were ordinary houses, in average neighborhoods, described by neighbors as quiet, nice and typical -- and they exist all over the world.
Only recently has any decisive legislation been passed to combat the issue of forced human trafficking and servitude. In 2000, Congress passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, which protects victims against deportation and prosecution if they speak out against their former captors and adds increased prison sentences for convicted traffickers. In 2003, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act renewed the U.S. government's commitment to helping those sold into forced labor or sex.
Though he is the man liberals like myself love to hate, George Bush deserves applause for taking a tougher stance on human trafficking than any president to date. He has forced some of the world's sex-trafficking hotspot countries to crack down on menacing international rings with harsher penalties. Recently a brothel owner in Cambodia was sentenced to 20 years in prison for trafficking children. But despite the efforts, wealthy businessmen from the United States can still take "sex tours" of Southeast Asia, and women from the Ukraine are still promised jobs but delivered lives of exploitation.
The problem of modern-day slavery is so immense that it should be a platform for our next election. Let it be a challenge to whoever wins in November. As long as more than half a million people are living their lives as slaves there is still work to be done. Girls like Victoria deserve no less.
Katie Kelberlau is a religious studies and history major. She can be reached at katherine.kelberlau@asu.edu.
