Child Slavery and Trafficking in US

Recently there was a posting regarding the Popularity of Animal Brothels. Today we are moving up the food chain to children.

People who should be trustworthy - have betrayed us.

Georgia principal posts $50,000 bond after arrest in child-sex sting. Georgia authorities arrested 14 people they accuse of traveling with the intent to have sex with children, including a suburban Atlanta elementary school principal.

Disney workers, paramedic among arrested in Lake County cyber sex sting. According to the article,three of the 22 arrested were Disney World employees, including Robert Kingsolver, Joel Torres and Patrick Holgerson. According to deputies, Holgerson was also willing to transmit HIV to a minor victim.

Parents should protect their children.  That's not always the case according to the Click Orlando article. "David Griffith, 47, of Minneola, said he arranged with a 7-year-old's mother to meet the child for sex. Deputies say they found the child had also been sexually abused by her own mother. Since Griffith's admission, deputies say the child is safe."

There is no shortage of stories online on the topic of child trafficking/human trafficking.  Just this January was the annual Presidential Proclamation -- National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, 2014 - NATIONAL SLAVERY AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING PREVENTION MONTH, 2014  Proclamations and observes have not stopped sexual abuse of children right here in theses United States.

The Polaris Project map splits
the U.S. into four tiers,
one being the best, based
on anti-trafficking measures.

Rape for Profit is a documentary in theaters now about the underage sex slavery problem in Seattle, Washington.  A report published by Polaris Project, one of the leading organizations in the global fight against human trafficking and modern-day slavery, rated and placed all 50 states plus the District of Columbia in one of four tiers based on the human trafficking laws in the state.

Wyoming, Arkansas, Montana and South Dakota were included in the bottom tier for what Polaris says was a minimal effort to enact human trafficking legislation.

Shared Hope, a nonprofit that works to bring justice to victims of sex trafficking, has also graded each state on the way it responds to sex trafficking crimes.

Two-thirds of trafficking victims are women and girls. They are recruited by means of threat.  Human trafficking is when a person is recruited, harbored, provided or obtained for the purposes of exploitation often sold as goods/products.  Trafficking laws vary from state to state, with victims often being arrested and treated like criminals, reinforcing their belief that the police can’t be trusted.

Forced laborers are making some of your favorite things.  The U.S. Department of Labor has devised a list of countries and the items they export that are produced by child and forced laborers. 

End Child Prostitution and Trafficking has devised a training course to teach hotel and motel staff how to identify a victim and to properly react. Find out if your hotel has completed the course before you book your next trip.

A number of trafficking victims are forced to work howling hours at hotels and motels for little or no pay.  Children are often exploited sexually at hotels because employees are not trained to spot such crimes.  Events like the Super Bowl contribute to incident of human trafficking in the U.S.  Sex trafficking victims are brought into the areas to work.

A Bloody Week in History

2013 April 15: Boston Marathon bombings: Two bombs detonated within seconds of each other near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Another suspected device was intentionally exploded in Copley Square. 3 dead and 183 injured.

Normally I would write a post in http://madnessstop.blogspot.com/ April 15, 2013 was Tax Day in the United States. I was trying to decide - file or ask for an extension? Breaking News.....Boston Marathon!

While drinking coffee and half listening to the news, I heard this was Devil Week. So exactly what happened in United States history?  Well it was bloody!

The week in history - April 15 – 21 saw the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, April 19, 1775 and the death of Abraham Lincoln, April 15, 1865.  On April 19, 1861, the first blood of the American Civil War is shed when a secessionist mob in Baltimore attacks Massachusetts troops bound for Washington, D.C. Four soldiers and 12 rioters were killed.

Deadly:

• April 18, 1983, suicide bomber destroyed U.S. Embassy in Lebanon. A suicide bomber carried out an attack in Beirut with a car-bomb that left 63 people dead, including 17 Americans. April 19, 1995 truck bomb exploded in Oklahoma City in a domestic terrorist attack. A truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., leaving 168 dead, including the 19 children who had been in the building's day-care center.  
• Two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999. 
• On April 16th in 2007, in one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history, 32 students and teachers die after being gunned down on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
• April 12, 1988 - Yū Kikumura, a member of the Japanese Red Army, is arrested with three pipe bombs on the New Jersey Turnpike. According to prosecutors, Kikumura planned to bomb a military recruitment office in the Veteran's Administration building in lower Manhattan on April 14, the anniversary of the U.S. raid on Libya.

Lack of Concern for Human Life:

April 20, 1914 - Militia slaughters strikers at Ludlow, Colorado, ending a bitter coal-miners' strike, Colorado militiamen attack a tent colony of strikers, killing dozens of men, women, and children.

April 21, 1930 a fire at an Ohio prison kills 320 inmates, some of whom burn to death when they are not unlocked from their cells. It is one of the worst prison disasters in American history. The prison, built to hold 1,500 people, was almost always overcrowded and notorious for its poor conditions. At the time of the 1930 fire, there were 4,300 prisoners living in the jail.

The Ohio State Penitentiary was built in Columbus in 1834. Throughout its history, it had a poor reputation. A cholera epidemic swept through the facility in 1849, killing 121 convicts. In 1893, a prison superintendent wrote that Ten thousand pages of history of the Ohio Penitentiary would [not] give one idea of the inward wretchedness of its 1,900 inmates. 

Ironic I watched the movie Prometheus last night. In Greek mythology, Prometheus (Greek) is a Titan, culture hero, and con artist figure who is credited with the creation of man from clay. Using the theme of the creation of man - seeking the origins of humanity, Prometheus a 2012 science fiction film is a story is set in the late 21st century. It centers on the crew of the spaceship Prometheus as they follow a star invitation discovered among the artifacts of several ancient Earth cultures. The crew arrives on a distant planet, and discovers a threat that could cause the extinction of the human race. 

The film deals with humanity's relationship with their creators and the consequence of defying them. Engineer(s) was sent to Earth to stop humanity's increasing aggression.  It was implied that some natural disasters were not all nature.  Were groups of population eliminated in an effort to control humans?  Is that why some cultures just seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth?  

Unlike friction where plots can be written with positive or negative endings, humans are deadly in their aggression as we can see in just one week in history........

.....But there is always at least one hero with positive virtues 

Darren Mccollester / Getty Images

Carlos Arredondo displays a blood-soaked flag. He had been handing them out when explosions ripped through areas near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday