Government Sanctioned Human Trafficking
Recently I was watching a favorite YouTuber who does an ongoing series about missing people. I could write an entire piece about how well presented her information is and how abundantly honest her sincerity is. Her name is Kendall Rae, look her up on YouTube, I believe the series is called “Where Is…”
At any rate, she led me to an organization founded by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore in 2012 that deals with putting an end to online child sex trafficking. The organization, called THORN, is where Kendall Rae puts some of the profits from her videos and merch sales, to date her channel has single handedly raised well over $100,000 for THORN.
As I watched Kendall’s videos, I noticed that in most of them there were teary-eyed people missing those kids, desperate to see them again. I thought, “Damn, I wish someone had cared about me like that.”
I have close up and personal experience with the foster care system in the United States and to be honest, it doesn’t seem terribly different than what I was hearing in the videos I was watching about trafficking.
Obviously there are differences, glaringly huge differences, and I am not trying in any way to diminish the terror that people who are trafficked go through. I am very well aware that they are not necessarily even in the same category. Yet there are similarities.
Foster kids are used for labor, for sex and as an outlet for all sorts of abuse. Some are picked by a creepy uncle, some are made to grift, and some are happy to end up in prison because it’s better than what they have to endure at home. It’s something no one talks about, and no one believes these kids when they speak out. More often than not, they are quickly dismissed.
I was in the system a long time ago though, perhaps it’s different now. My fear is that it’s worse, and no one will ever know because no one is talking about it and no one is standing there, teary-eyed and missing these kids, these orphans. They just get passed to another family, in another town and hope this one doesn’t use the hook end of the hanger or the buckle part of the belt, or worse.
I’ve seen when missing kids are found, the happy reunion with family and friends. The cop who found them is smiling nearby and everyone is on the road to healing. They are called survivors, and they are, in a different way though. The difference is that in cases where they are found, they are rescued, all that is left to survive is the aftermath, and believe me, that is no picnic. Again, I am not aiming to diminish that in any way.
However, I say hats off to the survivors who never get rescued. I hope that people will consider them from time to time and do what they do, light a candle, say a prayer, that sort of thing.
There are far more survivors out there still in survival mode than there are people who have been lucky enough to be rescued, and still no one talks about it, no one talks about anything anymore, instead they scream at each other over imagined slights and kill each other over cold fries.
