Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Sex slavery in America

In recent years enough news stories have broken about the sexual enslavement of women worldwide to make the public demand action, and the administration, in concert with Congress, acted. Sort of.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act was asked for, passed, and signed into law, providing funds for the prosecution of pimps and sex slave traders, and funds for treatment for the victims.... *IF* the victims are foreign citizens. Turns out we have no funding for, and apparently interest in, U.S. citizens who were beaten or drugged into sexual slavery! I quote from this article: “...The recent attorney general’s report states that TVPA funds are dedicated to non-U.S. citizen victims. Therefore, if you are a victim of sex trafficking in the U.S. from Mexico or Ukraine, there is money for immediate services ($1300 a month), but there are no funds similarly available for an American victim.

This denial of services to U.S. victims has real consequences. An FBI agent recently told me he found a 12-year-old American girl while investigating a sex-trafficking case. Because of lack of resources, he had nowhere to put her and had to send her home. (The biggest reason girls run away and get picked up by pimps is because they are abused or neglected at home.)”


Is there anything at all the government does right?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The government knows how to give itself a raise every now and then. That's about it.