Apparently heroin plays a big role in sex trafficking. News to me. In a Vanity Fair article I found online, there was a quote that was something like: "To older people, maybe your parents, heroin was injected."
Wait, wait, wait. Heroin is NOT injected?!? Then how is it administered? And also, am I really in the "older people/parent" category? Pretty sure I haven't even hit the 3-0 mark. I mean, I'm a married professional, so my drug and sex experimentation days are (mostly) over. When Alex and I want to try something new, it usually means a new restaurant or food cart we read about in the Willy Week, or maybe a new television show a friend recommended we rent on Netflix. Or maybe, just maybe, a new bar or club, if the spirit so very rarely moves us. But it hasn't been THAT long since our sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll days. So this heroin business? News to me. And for the record, apparently it is snorted now. Like coke. Which makes much more sense why upper-middle-class white kids are using heroin, since it doesn't seem like a far stretch from any other white powder.
But back to the sex trafficking. I sort of thought it was one of those things that low-life hookers who wanted crack did. That is partly true, only it's a whole lot more twisted and abusive than that. For most young women, their "pimps" make promises to them - of a better life, money, love, work, etc. And then often times drugs to get involved. It helps the pimps keep the girls around and further dependent on them. The craziest way some women get trafficked is that they are sold by their husbands or families. Or they respond to some sort of an ad for opportunities abroad. While they are not necessarily outright kidnapped and then aggressively stabbed with heroin needles, like in that movie with Liam Neeson, the victims are indeed kidnapped and drugged up.
We saw this documentary called "Very Young Girls" the other night. The movie itself actually sucked. It made me less sympathetic toward the cause. The girls were pretty obnoxious, being teenagers and all, and they were using the resources of this fabulous NYC-based nonprofit to help get them off the streets. Then they would sneak off and use their cell phones to call their "daddies" that "they loved and missed so much." Pathetic. But point being, being down-and-out, or a down-and-out-hormonal-teenage-woman, makes for a good victim, whether it's drug or human trafficking.
The Vanity Fair article was very informative and interesting. I am posting a link to it for a more eloquent report:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/05/sex-trafficking-201105?currentPage=1
Have you looked into _Half the Sky_? UMd assigns a "first year book" to all freshmen every year, and since I taught freshmen last year, I used it in my comp class. The authors are pretty transparent about their agenda, but I still found the stories of the women involved in sex trafficking quite compelling... and so did my students. The number of women who return to their owners/pimps (for a whole variety of reasons) was quite alarming, but it presented a more sympathetic picture of that problem than it sounds like this documentary does. Thanks for the VF link-- looking forward to reading it when I get a chance!
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