If you’ve ever wondered how girls can fall victim to sex trafficking, a newly released government report from Britain provides a harrowing glimpse into a world in which men who are supposedly "boy friends" of young teens are, instead, coercing the girls into forced sex, all for the purpose of generating quick cash.

According to a report in the Guardian newspaper , as many as 33 girls between the ages of 12 and 15 were involved in a case uncovered in Sheffield last year. Only one, a 15-year-old, was willing to give evidence in court, but following that a 23-year-old man was jailed for 10 years for serious sexual offenses which included rape of a child. Five other men faced deportation procedures.

What’s the scope of the problem? British police estimate that as many as 18,000 trafficking victims — many from China, southeast Asia and eastern Europe — are brought into Britain and then forced to work as prostitutes.

Human trafficking in the United States is receiving more national attention from federal prosecutors, local law enforcement agencies, social service workers and the general public. As many as 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year, according to government data. Yet skeptics continue to challenge the extent of trafficking, arguing that the actual number of reported incidents reflects a relatively minor problem. Judges and law enforcement officials, especially at the local level, are often among the doubters. Many still perceive human trafficking as an international issue that is rare or nonexistent in their communities.

Which raises an interesting question: if more police officers and judges were trained in understanding the many ways in which human trafficking plays out, what would the result be? Would cities and towns finally begin to realize that trafficking in human beings is a real – and growing – menace everywhere?

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The Wall Street Journal editorial page is one of the few mainstream news media publications to comment on the recent State Department 2008 Trafficking In Humans Report. We were especially drawn to the Journal’s summary statement of contemporary slavery:

"(M)odern-day slavery remains a scourge. The more light that can be shed on it the better chance of wiping it out."

Our sentiments exactly.

Read the entire Journal editoria l and post a comment about what you think.

The U.S. State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report was released this week, but if you blinked, you probably missed hearing about it.

That’s a shame because the report — despite its flaws and allegations of political influence impacting its data — does give the general public an overall look at the nature and extent of human trafficking around the world. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post, for example, have yet run stories on the report, and broadcast news has been largely silent.

The 2008 report, released by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, concludes that while progress in combating human slavery is being made, the lack of enforcement of anti-trafficking laws in many nations is enabling perpetrators to escape punishment. The focus on prosecutions, Rice said, was a new emphasis of this year’s report.

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There’s an interesting post over at Matador Volunteer with some interesting facts about modern human trafficking:

2008 witnesses the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in America. Amidst the celebrations, what many people fail to realize is that slavery persists today in the modern world on an enormous scale.

In spite of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948 stating that “slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms,” the figures accompanying the modern slave trade seem inconceivable in a global society that prides itself upon its modern-day values and emphasis on human rights.

1. There are more people in slavery now than at any other time in human history.
2. The value of slaves has decreased.
3. Slavery still exists in the US.
4. Slavery is hidden behind many other names, thus disguising it from society.
5. The least known method of slavery is the most widely used.

Continue reading 10 Shocking Facts About Global Slavery in 2008

According to a report in the Sacramento Bee, teenage prostitution, in which meetings are arranged via Internet solicitations, is increasing rapidly. The girls being "recovered" from life as a prostitute — some of them as young as 14 — are moved from city to city, motel to motel by their controllers ("pimps") who solicit business on portable laptops with Internet access. Sacramento detectives have found victims transported to the California capital from Minnesota, Montana, Texas and Wisconsin.

In 2003, the FBI reported that about 1,400 juveniles were arrested nationally for prostitution, but law enforcement officials believe the number is much higher today — and growing.

The Sacramento Bee article is harrowing reading, and here’s the link .

Law enforcement officials increasingly are being trained to identify crime situations in which human trafficking victims may be involved. Last week the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a day-long training seminar for local law enforcement in suburban Dayton, Ohio. Attendees were told that although human trafficking is difficult to detect, it appears to be spreading into cities and towns across America — including local neighborhoods in Midwestern cities like Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton.

Read more about this disturbing trend here .

Many, perhaps most Americans probably think that human trafficking is more of an issue in other countries, but not the U.S. However, there’s growing evidence that trafficking in humans is becoming a serious domestic phenomenon.

The latest evidence comes from, of all places, Spokane Washington, which is located in rural eastern Washington state, far removed from any major urban centers. According to a recent report, using data from 25 social service agencies in the Spokane area, human trafficking — including mail order brides to teenage prostitution — is causing "considerable concern" in Spokane.

The report is detailed in an article in the Spokane Spokesman Review . Click here to read the entire story.

Author Eric Schlosser, who wrote the best-selling book "Fast Food Nation," (about what you really don’t want to know about fast food) raises an interesting — and ominous — issue in a recent New York Times Opinion Page article. He suggests that the Burger King hamburger chain, rather than helping improve the lives and pay of migrant workers who pick tomatoes for your Whopper, is instead playing hardball with the organizations who represent the workers. These workers, it has long been alleged, are paid next to nothing and work in conditions that are tantamount to slave labor.

Burger King competitors, including McDonald’s and Yum Brands, have at least begun to recognize the slave labor issue, Schlosser says. But not Burger King, he adds.

Click here to read more

“Radiohead is taking MTV EXIT to a new level and expanding the Asia campaign, which is on air, online and on the ground,” said Olivier Carduner, USAID’s Regional Mission Director for Asia.

As part of this effort, Radiohead released a music video on MTV on May 1st to the track All I Need, from its album In Rainbows. Filmed by Oscar-winning cinematographer John Seale (”The English Patient”) and award-winning director Steve Rogers, the video depicts a day in the life of both an affluent youngster and a child making shoes in a sweatshop, sending a message that everyone plays a role in trafficking and exploitation.

Rotaru, who is twenty-six, works for the International Organization for Migration, a group connected to the United Nations, in Chisinau, Moldova. She is a repatriation specialist. Her main task is bringing lost Moldovans home. Nearly all her clients are victims of human trafficking, most of them women sold into prostitution abroad, and their stories pour across her desk in stark vignettes and muddled sagas of desperation, violence, betrayal, and sorrow.

Her allies and colleagues in this work are widely scattered. An ebullient Dubai prison officer named Omer, who calls Rotaru “sister,” has been a help. So have Russian policemen, an Israeli lawyer, a Ukrainian psychologist, an Irish social worker, a Turkish women’s shelter, Interpol, and various consulates and embassies, as well as travel agents, priests, and partner organizations, including an anti-trafficking group called La Strada, which has offices downstairs from Rotaru’s and a dedicated victims’ hot line.

Click here to read more

SHANGHAI - China said Wednesday that it was investigating whether hundreds or perhaps thousands of children from poor areas in the southwest part of the country were sold to work as slave laborers in booming coastal factory cities.

Authorities in southern Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong, said they had already “rescued” more than 100 children from factories in the city of Dongguan, a huge manufacturing center known for producing and exporting toys, textiles and electronics.

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