When I was looking to write this post, I stumbled across this video on youtube. After browsing the web for hours, I realized even I did not know as much about human and child trafficking as I thought I did. There are hundreds of videos, psa’s, and even movies that depict the horrors of trafficking. For some reason this particular video struck a cord with me. It was difficult for me to watch this video and not tear up or feel deeply saddened at the thought of this little girl going missing. Every child of the hundreds of thousands that disappear each year in the United States alone have dreams and hopes for the future. They dream of being doctors, growing up to own a big home, or of one day visiting Disney World. They don’t dream about being abducted and forced into sex slavery and prostitution. But this is the sad world we live in today where within forty-eight hours of going missing, a child will be lured into the sex slavery world.
Another part of the reason I find this topic and this video so disturbing is because it is so common. We hear about these stories all the time on the news and like the video said, we forget about these children just as quickly. For instance, everybody knows of the Jaycee Lee Duggard story or of Natalee Holloway. They once too were young girls that went missing. For awhile the whole nation watched and searched for these poor children, praying that no harm would come to them. As the days, months, and years dragged on, we heard less and less of them as the searches slowed and eventually stopped all together. Their names stopped appearing in the news. Their faces weren’t plastered around every neighborhood on posters. People rarely even said their names and they soon became a distant memory. Fortunately, Jaycee was lucky to be recovered after 18 years in captivity, but Natalee was never heard from again. But the families of these abducted children never forget, though they know that after the initial 48 hours their children could be across the world and gone forever.
To me, being active in the fight against child trafficking is more than just a preventative measure. There are multiple government programs and non for profit organizations that fight to stop child slavery (such as Stop Child Trafficking Now, sctnow.org). But being active also means never forgetting those children that have gone missing and could be lost in the underworld of trafficking. It means never losing hope for them and continuing the search until they are found. These children may be missing, but that does not mean they have to be forgotten.
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