Statistics
Trafficking children is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of children for the purpose of exploitation such as prostitution, child pornography, forced labor, and involuntary servitude.
- Every year, 1.2 million children are sold into sex slavery (UNICEF). This number is greater than the transatlantic slave days.
- Child sex trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry. The profits from selling children for sex are second only to the profits from trafficking drugs (Europol).
- Some children are brutally beaten, drugged, starved, and raped up to 20 times a day.
- Children are kidnapped from the United States at an alarming rate and sold internationally into brothels and upscale “gentlemen clubs.” In the United States, a child is lost or abducted every 40 seconds (U.S. Dept. of Justice).
- 797,500 children in the USA, younger than 18, were reported missing in a one year period of time (U.S. Dept of Justice).