About two or three years ago I went to a concert in downtown Winston-Salem with my friends Mandy and Ben. The band we went to go see was the Old Crow Medicine Show, and I must say I have never seen so many older people at a concert. I definitely felt out of place. Even though the crowd was filled with older people, I still had a great time. After we left the concert Mandy and I saw these two women on the side of the street. They had far too much make-up on, their hair was a mess, and they were dressed in these skimpy dresses, tall heels, and tights with holes in them. We were flabbergasted. We had never seen prostitutes before and I did not expect to see them downtown. After staring for far too long we see a cop car come around the corner and the women disappeared.
Prostitution is illegal in most states in the United States. Most people don't think about it, but most women who are prostitutes do not choose to be, they are forced. Many women who are apart of human trafficking are either kidnapped or lured to a different country (or somewhere else in the same country) and forced into sex trafficking. Many women are never actually sold, but instead they are transported and exploited by a single crime network. An example of this would be the Albanian mafia in Eastern Europe who transport their women to Western Europe and then they are put into brothels.
Women are lured into sex trafficking in many different ways. The main way I'm going to focus on is how women are told that if they move to a different country they are promised a job, marriage, and a better living. An example of this will be shown in the article called Mexican convicted of luring women into US sex slavery by BBC News. In this article Cortez-Meza has promised women that if they moved to Georgia then they would be promised either a job or marriage. The women are very vulnerable and an easy victim for Cortez-Meza because they are hoping for a better life. Since the women were desperate for a better life for themselves and also their families, they believe Cortez-Meza.
"BBC News - Mexican Convicted of Luring Women into US Sex Slavery." BBC - Homepage. 23 Nov. 2010. Web. 16 Mar. 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11826365>.
In this article a Mexican man named Cortez-Meza is convicted of life in prison in the United States for luring ten women to Georgia and forcing them into sex slavery. Cortez promised the women jobs and romance but once they got to Atlanta, Georgia he forced them into sex slavery. The women say that he threatened to kill their family, isolated them from their families and also beat them. The women were forced to have sex with dozens of men a night. This article shows how the government got involved to help prevent sex slavery. With the help from the government and police, Cortez was caught and the women were able to get away from the terrors of sex slavery. This article made me think about how much sex trafficking goes on in the United States. I thought that sex trafficking was in foreign countries and not the United States.
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