Children Are Not For Sale
September 15, 2023 | Washington, D.C.
by Trayce Bradford, Eagle Forum Issue Chairman Opposing Human Trafficking
The powerful line, “God’s children are not for sale” is at the heart of the movie taking the nation by storm, Sound of Freedom. This agonizing true story of one man’s quest to rescue siblings who were abducted and sold into sex slavery has shined the light on the dark world of trafficking and into the pit of hell. His quest was a success and resulted in 100 additional children being rescued from the grasp of evil.
The Human Trafficking Institute estimated that in 2022 there were 24.9 million victims of trafficking worldwide, while the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons from the same year estimated at least 20% of those victims were children. That number approaches 100% in parts of Africa and Thailand. Human trafficking rakes in a monstrous $150 billion annually, with the trafficking of children accounting for $35 billion of that total. It has surpassed the arms trade and is on pace to surpass the drug trade as the world’s fastest growing illegal enterprise (International Organization of Migration, 2022 report).
The United States ranks number one in both production and consumption of child pornography and sits among the top three as a destination country for sex trafficked children.
Although slavery has existed since the beginning of time, there have never been as many enslaved as there are at present. Human trafficking, or modern-day slavery, is divided into three major categories: sex trafficking, labor trafficking, and organ harvesting and trafficking. Children have always been part of the slave trade, whether for labor, sex or even child sacrifice (Leviticus 18:21), but how did America become the world’s leading producer/consumer of child pornography and trafficked children?
In the 1990s and 2000s, the rise of modern day slavery brought reports of India’s red-light districts onto the world stage, because of ministry work overseas and the award-winning movie Slum Dog Millionaire, which exposed gruesome trafficking rings in India. The blockbuster hit Taken also opened people’s eyes to trafficking, depicting young women being abducted from one country and sold to another, but it was the film Amazing Grace and their partnering with the anti-slavery movement that began to expose the issue.
Still, many believed that trafficking was a rarity. Americans would shake their heads and feel thankful it was not in our own backyards, but we were wrong. We failed to recognize the burgeoning business of child sexual exploitation. Labor trafficking still comprised the highest percentage of victims including children, but human trafficking and child sexual exploitation statistics have shown a marked increase. In 2010 Atlanta, Georgia recorded 7,000 online requests for sex with underage victims (children) in just one month (Shapiro Group, 2010).
Many Americans equate sex trafficking with prostitution and believe it consists of women who have either made bad choices or fallen on hard times. Sex trafficking does not and never did fall under the category of prostitution. Children may NOT consent to sex and, while in many cases prostitutes are themselves trafficked, prostitution is an adult-only endeavor. Children cannot be prostitutes as they do not have the ability to consent to a sexual or a financial relationship. The only term that appropriately defines what is happening to these minor children is child rape.
For years the drug trade was the leading money-maker for the underbelly of society, but a huge market drove demand and somewhere along the way, human beings, little ones, became the preferred commodity. While a kilo of cocaine is sold in a single transaction, a person can be sold repeatedly throughout a single day. Sexually exploited children are sold 4-10 times daily with some trafficking rings selling a child every 15 minutes from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., which equates to as many as 30-40 times in a single day (It’s Happening Right Here Documentary).
There is an abundant source feeding the expanding business of selling children: our open border. Unless witnessed firsthand, it is hard to comprehend the transformation occurring at our border and rapidly moving inward. In 2022, the U.S. Custom and Border Protection Agency reported that over 150,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the border and as of May 2023, the numbers were consistent with the prior year. Approximately 85,000 children are unaccounted for and have allegations of child trafficking. These numbers do not include those children coming with families that are indebted to cartels nor do they account for children being used by adults, mostly young males, who are NOT their relatives.
Bags of colored wristbands that distinguish indentured servants trafficked by cartels and small abandoned children are common sights at the border. Many are brought here for the sole purpose of sex or labor trafficking. Cartels are making millions from sex trafficking, but they aren’t the only perpetrators of this heinous crime. Organized crime syndicates, gangs, single pimps and even family members are participating in the growing enterprise of treating human beings, created in the image of God, as a commodity. Some will end up in sex-oriented businesses, some as cheap labor. Many victims are under legal age but regardless of their age or destination, none of them will be able to pay the debt owed as the fee for bringing them across the border. In other words, they are indebted to their captors for life.
Nothing is deterring these criminal/terror organizations from growing their illegal businesses. The Biden administration appears to be fostering the expansion of trafficking and sexual exploitation. The criminal division of the Department of Justice recently made significant changes to its content on sex trafficking regarding minors. These changes affect the subject areas of “international sex trafficking of minors,” “domestic sex trafficking of minors” and “child victims of prostitution” which directly impacts the focus of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Services section of the DOJ.
Conversely, all three of these sectionals were substantially bolstered under the Trump administration. Based on compelling Congressional testimony and recovery missions, the Trump administration properly delineated the reality of cross-border trafficking, much of which was removed with these recent changes. The deleted language also presented a more precise definition of the term domestic sex-trafficking which acknowledged that American children are being recruited and exploited for sex. At a time when the number of exploited children has never been higher, this DOJ prioritized removing language that more accurately defined certain aspects of this crime. Why?
To answer this question effectively, there must be an understanding of the link between sex trafficking/exploitation and the top-down push to hypersexualize children. Drag Queen story hours, gender identity, and the “transification” of American children is being shoved down our collective throats. Children are being exposed to sexually explicit content through classroom materials, books and personal sexual grooming at an alarming rate. It is happening in classrooms around the nation and is perpetrated by activist teachers, secretive school boards and administrations. Books that are illegal according to most state’s obscenity laws are being deemed acceptable reading for minors and made available to them in libraries. At ages as young as four, children are being encouraged to explore their sexuality.
So why the push to hypersexualize our children? The answer to these questions lies in an even darker side, one that is pure evil. The hypersexual assault on our children is an integral part of the current effort to normalize pedophilia. According to the pedophile community, the only thing more fluid than gender is AGE. Assigning what they insist is a benign term, “minor attracted persons,” to someone who is a pedophile is an attempt to deny reality and normalize perversion. Pedophilia is a mental depravity and must be treated as such. Those who deny or clap back at this are either willfully ignorant, fantasists, complicit or pedophiles themselves.
Years ago, Phyllis Schlafly addressed this progression both in her book Child Abuse in the Classroom and as she testified before Congress. She often spoke of the attacks on the American family. Every bit of this is intentional and is poised to break down the functioning support system of the nuclear American family, fatherhood, motherhood, and replace the God-designed human identity in favor of a sexually perverse, narcissistic, and mentally ill society.
Amidst this present darkness came an unorthodox movie funded and promoted outside the Hollywood studio system. Why did this independent project storyline trigger the mainstream media to pan the production and claim the storyline was a “QAnon” fabrication? Evil does not want us to see what is happening to our children. This film instills in us the courage to fight back and the hope that we can defeat this evil!
Americans have crossed the Rubicon and we cannot go back. It is time to rescue our children!
“Can we love God’s children more than we fear evil,” asked Jim Caviezel, actor in the Sound of Freedom.