A 16-year-old girl alleges she was raped 90 times in a single weekend, confirming the disturbing existence of modern day sex slavery in the United Kingdom.
Despite being traumatized by the ordeal, the teenager managed to provide evidence of the attacks. An investigation is underway to thoroughly review her claims by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).
The girl did not come from a background that would have typically put her at risk of being unwillingly recruited into sexual slavery . However, she’d become enslaved after befriending other vulnerable girls.
Human trafficking, the trade of human beings for forced sex and labor, is not isolated to the UK. It happens on a global scale. Nearly 80 percent of the millions of people trafficked are drafted into sexual slavery. Others are enslaved for labor and organ harvesting.
Eighty percent of those sold into sexual slavery are under 24, and some are as young as six. The business elicits billions of dollars annually, and a single captive can generate nearly $250,000 for a pimp or keeper during the duration of their enslavement.
Children and teenagers targeted by abductors are especially vulnerable to their enticement. Often potential victims come from deprived or dysfunctional backgrounds of poverty, limited education, and abuse. Gullibly they are lured by false promises and hopes of better lives.
Young women are lured by the potential of travel and employment in other countries too good to be true. Travelers, as seen in the movie Taken , are also kidnaped by criminals and leveraged into slavery . There are even cases of victims being sold off by supposed loved ones.
Women and children are enslaved and exploited, abused, and manipulated.
Trafficking has a profound impact on the overall health and well-being of women forced into prostitution. The abuse the women experience includes physical, sexual, and psychological. They are often beaten, raped, or threatened. This is intended to set an example to others, dissuading them from violating the rules or attempting to run away. The women are not physically brutalized to the point of permanently ruining beauty or purchase appeal.
Captives are coerced by their keepers into drug and alcohol use in hopes of tempering their will, making them more compliant.
Some slaves are encumbered with threats to their loved ones and economic exploitation. Captors will threaten to kill or harm parents, children, or friends in order to keep their slave in line. Debt bondage is used as a means of manipulating the kept person under the belief they owe money for accommodations and travel costs, and their travel documents are withheld. However, the debt is never resolved.
Many work and live in dreadful conditions. An estimated 30,000 victims of sex trafficking die each year from disease, torture, and neglect.
Authorities are concerned about the less than law abiding but legally empowered individuals who turn a blind eye to the existence of human trafficking or are well compensated by sex slave rings to ignore or cover it up.
Victims of enslavement are always urged to come forward without fear of prosecution for crimes committed while under duress of their captors.
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