Karla Jacinto was a victim of human trafficking for four years as she endured underage prostitution, abuse and threats to her life and her baby, according to CNN.
She estimates that with roughly 30 Johns a day, seven days a week, she was raped a total of 43,200 times.
Karla was not a tourist in a foreign country who stumbled into the wrong alleyway. She was lured by a trafficker who promised her a much better home than the one run by her abusive mother, and she fell for it in her own backyard — Mexico City.
Karla has since escaped and is now a virulent activist trying to bring awareness to the growing problem.
Though there are many horrors to her story, what seemed to stick with me most was that she painted a severely different picture than what we have come to associate with human trafficking.
Rather than a violent kidnapping, forced drugs and the selling of female bodies, Karla was tricked into it. There were no warning signs.
The problem is in our backyard. In the United States, 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked for sex or work, according to humantrafficking.org. According to caseact.org and the 2010 Trafficking in Person Report by the U.S. Department of State, there are 12.3 million people globally living as illegal slaves, and “California harbors three of (the) FBI’s 13 highest child sex trafficking areas in the nation: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego.”
However, we seem to think of human trafficking as a problem far away, in the movies and not something that can and does affect U.S. citizens. ABC News reported some of the victims are from “close-knit” families, or are “straight-A student(s).” One girl was even abducted from her own driveway.
The problem is real and important, and Karla Jacinto’s story only serves to emphasize how insidious child predators can be. Though she was abducted in Mexico, trafficking between Mexico and the U.S. was already recognized by officials as a major issue, according to CNN.
Unfortunately, this problem doesn’t have a clear solution. Oftentimes the girls and boys picked up by predators are from abusive homes and want to run away. Predators are so good at manipulating their victims that the victims do not realize what is happening until it’s too late.
We need to start addressing this problem — teaching people about the dangers predators pose and changing the dialogue around human trafficking.
No one deserves to be used by another person, not when we have the means to stop it.
ewenning@indiana.edu
@emmawenninger
