Saving our daughters....

Today, my sweet girl turns 4. She is being showered with all the typical American birthday "things". Gifts, a new outfit, special meals of her choice. On Saturday, she is having a birthday party with over 30 people attending, to celebrate HER.

Today, all around the world, girls just like my daughter are being sold into the sex trade and exploited. Girls, just like my daughter, whose parents want them to have a better life. Who, for a mere $100 think they are doing well by them, not realizing the atrocity their lives are going to turn into.

The domestic statistics are beyond alarming:

• 300,000 children in the U.S. are at risk every year for commercial sexual exploitation. -U.S. Department of Justice

• 600,000 – 800,000 people are bought and sold across international borders each year; 50% are children, most are female. The majority of these victims are forced into the commercial sex trade. – U.S. Department of State, 2004, Trafficking in Persons Report, Washington, D.C.

• An estimated 14,500 to 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States each year. The number of U.S. citizens trafficked within the country is even higher, with an estimated 200,000 American children at risk for trafficking into the sex industry. – U.S Department of Justice Report to Congress from Attorney General John Ashcroft on U.S. Government Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons

• An estimated 2.5 million children, the majority of them girls, are sexually exploited in the multibillion dollar commercial sex industry – UNICEF

• Investigators and researchers estimate the average predator in the U.S. can make more than $200,000 a year off one young girl. – NBC Report by Teri Williams

  
  

  
  

  The difference between my sweet girl, and the sweet girls all over the world? Luck? No. Lack of love? No. What is it? I can't say I honestly know. Latitude and longitude? Maybe. But, no longer will those girls not have a voice. Stand up, shout out. Scream if you have to. Because, if it was my daughter, you'd better believe I'd be screaming. And those girls are someones daughters. Be the voice they don't have.