"But whoever has material possessions and sees their brother in need, yet looks away, closing their own heart of compassion from helping, the very nature of God, Love, doesn't live inside." 1 John 3:17
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.
—William Wilberforce
- Globally, the average cost of a slave is $90.
- Trafficking primarily involves exploitation which comes in many forms, including: forcing victims into prostitution, subjecting victims to slavery or involuntary servitude and compelling victims to commit sex acts for the purpose of creating pornography.
- The typical age of entry into sex slavery is 13-14 years old.
- According to some estimates, approximately 80% of trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and 19% involves labor exploitation.
- $32,000,000 total yearly profits for the human trafficking industry.
- There are approximately 20 to 30 million modern day slaves in the world today.
Turning a human being into a thing is almost always the first step towards justifying violence
against that person. —Jean Kilbourne
It’s difficult to estimate just how many women and girls are impacted by sex trafficking, in part because you can’t easily divide sex workers into those who are working voluntarily and involuntarily. But in their book Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn estimate that around 3 million women and girls (and a small number of boys) worldwide are currently enslaved in the sex trade — bought, held and forced into commercial sex work against their will. This figure may even be on the conservative side, as it doesn’t account for people who were intimidated into prostitution or the millions more under 18 who can’t consent to working in brothels.
Let us remember what hurts the victim the most is not the cruelty of the oppressor,
but the silence of the bystander. —Eli Wiesel
