DOMESTIC HUMAN TRAFFICKING

One of the greatest scandles is that American children are victims of Human Trafficking.  Very little is done to help these children because most of the human trafficking efforts are to address the victims of International Trafficking.  According to the Polaris Project," one of the largest forms of domestic sex trafficking in the U.S. involves traffickers who 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, commonly referred to as pimps, particularly target vulnerable youth, such as runaway and homeless youth, and reinforce the reality that the average age of entry into prostitution is 12-13 years old in the U.S.  Sex trafficking victims, on average, are first exploited by their trafficker at the age of  13. "(taken from polaris project website)