SCCAT/COP Shop/RESOURCE CENTER
The next S.C.C.A.T. meeting will be on Tuesday, February 7, at 7:00 p.m. in the library at Lakeside High School. Elections will be held and don’t forget your dues.
January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention month. So you think that child sex trafficking doesn’t happen in the United States! Child/Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes in the world. (U.S. State Department).
In Washington State, Washington’s task force against trafficking of persons reports that our state is a hotbed for recruiting, transporting and the sale of people for labor. The U.S. is a source, transit and destination country for men, women and children who are subjected to forced labor, debt bondage, document servitude, and sex trafficking. In some areas they are used for prostitutes, in massage parlors, brothels, hotel/services, agriculture, health/elder care and strip-club dancing.
Washington State is on an international border with Canada and has an abundance of ports and vast rural areas which depend on agricultural workers. American kids are easier to recruit and sell since there are no borders to cross inside the USA.
Child victims are often runaways, troubled or homeless. The average age is 12 years but ages range from infants to teens.
SHARED HOPE INTERNATIONAL reveals that pimps usually sell minor girls for $400 an hour on U.S. streets. Minors are sold on average of 10-15 times daily six days a week and receive no pay. Gangs find that prostituting minors is a source of prestige and income. Selling child pornography is a three billion dollar industry. One hundred thousand websites offer child porn and fifty-five percent of Internet child porn comes from the United States.
Washington State was first to criminalize trafficking and in 2007, created a new criminal category for the commercial sex abuse of a minor. Signs are posted at rest stops throughout the state informing trafficking victims how to get help. A bipartisan group of Washington senators introduced a package of bills (SB6251 - SB6260, SB6103 & SB6104) intended to thwart human trafficking - a generic term used to describe prostitution, reproductive slavery, commercial exploitation and forced labor. (The Olympia Report).
HUMAN TRAFFICKING HOTLINE
1-888-373-7888 Toll Free 24/7.
www.atg.wa.gov/humantrafficking
www.atg.wa.gov)crime&safety
SCCAT Volunteer