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Human trafficking is modern day slavery and is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world. It is the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or taking of persons by means of threat, force, coercion, abduction, fraud, or deception for the purpose of exploiting them.

The United Nations estimates that 2.5 million people are trafficked annually. It deprives people of their human rights and freedoms, it is a global health risk, and it fuels organized crime.

Victims of trafficking are forced or coerced into labor or sexual exploitation. Labor trafficking ranges from domestic servitude and small-scale labor operations to large-scale operations such as farms, sweatshops, and major multinational corporations.

Sex trafficking is one of the most profitable forms of trafficking and involves any form of sexual exploitation in prostitution, pornography, bride trafficking, and the commercial sexual abuse of children.

Sex Trafficking to the US

The United States is a destination country for international trafficking: transportation of foreign women and children into the U.S. for purposes of sexual and labor exploitation.  The State Department estimates that approximately 18,000 foreign nationals are trafficked annually into the United States alone.

Victims brought to the U.S. originate from Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa.  Foreign national women and children brought to the U.S. for sex trafficking find themselves forced to work in massage parlors, hostess clubs, commercially-fronted brothels, residential brothels, escort services, and strip clubs.

Sex Trafficking Within the US

Sex trafficking also happens to U.S. citizens and residents already residing within the U.S. borders. An estimated 300,000 American children are at risk for trafficking into the sex industry annually.

Traffickers coerce women and children to enter the commercial sex industry through the use of a variety of recruitment and control mechanisms in strip clubs, street-based prostitution, escort services, and brothels. 

Domestic sex traffickers (“pimps”) particularly target vulnerable young girls, such as runaway, homeless, and foster-care children. The average age of entry into prostitution is 12-13 years old in the U.S.  One reason that most girls working in prostitution enter the trade in their preteens is directly related to the age at which many were victims of incest. The average age of incest is 12 years old. Incest and other forms of abuse often drive a child to run away from home and become vulnerable to the slick tactics of pimps and other predators.

The pimp seduces a new recruit with the lure of love, protection, wealth, designer clothes, fancy cars, and exclusive nightclubs. Pimps move from city to city looking for children and young women who are easy prey: alone, desperate, and alienated. Once they move the victim from her hometown into a strange city, the pimp can easily force her to work as a prostitute. Thousands of children and women are victimized in this way every year.

5 Ways You Can Fight Human Trafficking

1. Get Informed and Inform Others
   • Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade—and How We Can Fight It
   • The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade
   • Sex Trafficking: The Global Market in Women and Children
   • Terrify No More: Young Girls Held Captive and the Daring Undercover Operation to Win Their Freedom
2. Get Involved
3. Support Organizations Fighting Trafficking
   • International Justice Mission
   • Not For Sale
4. Be An Informed Consumer
5. Join A Local or State Anti-trafficking Group

Rain City Hymnal

The first offering from Re:Sound is the Rain City Hymnal. Listen online and get the record from the Re:Sound website. Find out more.

The number of occurrences of sexual assaults is staggering. At least 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men are or will be victims of sexual assault in their lifetime. More staggering than the prevalence is the damage done to the victim. The effects are physical, social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.

Sexual assault is not just rape by a stranger with a weapon. Most victims (approximately 80%) are assaulted by an acquaintance (relative, friend, dating partner, spouse, pastor, teacher, boss, coach, therapist, doctor, etc.). Sexual assault also includes attempted rape or any form of nonconsensual sexual contact.

This post is written to sexual assault victims, not about them.

What happened to you was not your fault. You are not to blame. You did not deserve it. You did not ask for this. You should not be silenced. Nobody had the right to violate you. You were supposed to be treated with dignity and respect. You are not damaged goods. You are not worthless. You do not have to pretend like nothing happened. Healing can happen, and there is hope.

While all of this is true, you may still feel the effects of the sexual assault—disgrace, a deep sense of defilement and filth that is encumbered with shame.

Disgrace vs. Grace

Disgrace is the opposite of grace. Grace is love that seeks you out even if you have nothing to give in return. Grace is being loved when you are or feel unlovable. Grace has the power to turn despair into hope. Grace listens, lifts up, cures, transforms, and heals.

Disgrace destroys, causes pain, deforms, and wounds. It alienates and isolates. Disgrace makes you feel worthless, rejected, unwanted, and repulsive, like a persona non grata (a "person without grace"). Disgrace silences and shuns. Your suffering of disgrace is only increased when others force your silence. The refusals of others to speak about sexual assault and listen to victims tell their story is a refusal to offer grace and healing.

One-Way Love

To your sense of disgrace, God gives grace. He restores, repairs, and re-creates. A good short definition of grace is "one-way, unconditional love" (Paul Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life). This is the opposite of your experience of assault, which was "one-way violence."

One-way love does not avoid you but comes near you, not because you earned it but because you need it. It is the lasting transformation that takes place in human experience. One-way love is the change agent you need. You need something to change regarding the internal pain you are experiencing.

The experience of sexual assault frequently causes a victim to ask two questions: How can I be rid of my disgrace (2 Sam. 13:13)? How can I receive grace? The answer to both questions is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Redemption

The Bible begins with creation in harmony, unity, and peace, and it ends with a restored creation. In between these two "bookends" unfolds the drama of redemption. Salvation was needed because of the tragedy of human rebellion that resulted in disgrace and destruction. Because God is faithful and compassionate, he restores his fallen creation and responds with grace and redemption. This good news is fully expressed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and its scope is "as far as the curse is found." Jesus is the redemptive work of God in our own history, in our own human flesh.

Victims can more meaningfully celebrate the victorious resurrection of Christ when they can identify with the horrendous victimizing of the cross. Jesus was the recipient of violence that mirrors much of what victims experience (shame, humiliation, silence, betrayal, pain, mockery, travesty of justice, loneliness, etc.). His suffering and death were real and brutal, but there was a resurrection after Good Friday. The cross is both the consequence of evil and God's method of accomplishing redemption. Jesus' resurrection is proof that God is about redeeming, healing, and making all things new.

Justin and Lindsey Holcomb are working on a forthcoming Re:Lit book dealing with this topic.

Porn Again Christian

Pastor Mark Driscoll's frank discussion on pornography and masturbation is now available from Amazon. Find out more.