Today is Human Trafficking Awareness Day, something two years ago I had never heard of but now consumes my life.
I remember in high school when I got a VW Jetta and at that time, I had never seen one before. It didn’t take long before I saw them every single time I went out on the road.
Maybe you’ve recently discovered a new band and suddenly you hear their music every time you turn on the radio or notice them playing in the soundtrack of a movie.
Welcome to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or “frequency illusion” which is when a concept or thing you just found out about suddenly seems to crop up everywhere. source
For me, that is exactly what happened when I learned about sex trafficking and unfortunately, now that I know about it, I do see it happening everywhere.
Do you know what sex trafficking or sex slavery is?
95% of the people I talk to have never even heard of it before or don’t know what it is, if they have heard of it.
Let me be frank: girls and boys are being sold for sex and it’s happening in every state and most likely is happening where you live.
Sorry to be graphic but just to help you understand that this means they are being raped, sometimes 20 to 30 times a DAY. Some of them are still living at home and their parents have no idea.
How people are trafficked: force, fraud or intimidation.
Most victims are preyed upon sometimes for over a year. When I went to a workshop given by Thorn (yes, that’s Ashton Kutcher’s organization), they shared that most of the victims know their trafficker before being trafficked. That means that the majority of them are not being kidnapped like in the movie Taken. Their trafficker or pimp is a predator that grooms the child (often through social media), gets them to trust them and then tricks them into having sex with strangers.
-In the U.S. human trafficking is a $9.5 BILLION industry.
-A pimp can make $100-250k per year, having 4 to 6 girls
-The average age of girls and boys being trafficked is 11 to 14 years old.
-Kids in the foster care system are targeted by traffickers.
-Only 1-2% of trafficking victims are ever rescued.
-Some of these kids are trafficked by their friends.
What if you were one conversation away from preventing sex trafficking?
We have a Home Awareness Program where we ask you to invite three or more people over to have a conversation about sex trafficking. We give you everything you need in our Hospitality Toolkit which includes: a step-by-step guide-book, video of a roundtable discussion and stories to share. So you literally do not have to even know what it is or be an expert, you just have to be willing to be a host.
Why do this?
Every expert in this field that we have talked to has told us that the very best way to prevent sex trafficking is through awareness which is exactly what our Home Awareness Program is all about.
The reason we use hospitality is because Lydia, in the Book of Acts (16:14-15), used hospitality to show her faithfulness. It’s a biblical mandate that most of us struggle with because we make it about entertaining instead of just opening up our home for conversation and refreshment.
We make it SUPER easy for you to make a difference in your community.
I promise you, even the most introverted person can do this.
We need more prevention and awareness which brings me back to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
The more people that talk about this, the better. For each one of you reading this blog post, if you take a minute to get informed about what sex trafficking or sex slavery is, I am certain that you’ll discover that it’s going on in your city and maybe even in your kid’s schools.
Would you be interested in helping us by signing up for our Beta Home Awareness group?
The goal is for you to invite 3 or more friends over to discuss this and then those friends invite 3 or more people over to their house and so on and so on…..until we end this.
We could end sex trafficking but we have to step outside of our comfort zone and talk about it. Will you help us do that?
Featured Image: Andrik Langfield Petrides
