700,000 to 900,000 women  and girls are being sex trafficked in the United States today.

Now ripped from the headlines is the story of one of them.

Director Joel Reisig  tackles this matter in a forthcoming movie unlike any other.

Every day young women, aged 13 – 17, are kidnapped, beaten, raped, drugged, and sold as sex slaves. Currently, girls in America are at risk of sex trafficking and exploitation. This is raw look into what they go through.  This movie is not for the squeamish.

Based on true stories of children who’ve been kidnapped for the underground sex slave industry.  “A Parent’s Worst Nightmare” is a powerful story, based on multiple real life events.

Facts About Sex Trafficking

• Nearly 80% of human trafficking is for sex, and 19% is for labor exploitation.
• Researchers note that sex trafficking plays a major role in the spread of HIV.
• There are more human slaves in the world today than ever before in history.
• There are an estimated 27 million adults and 13 million children around the world who are victims of human trafficking.
• An estimated 30,000 victims of sex trafficking die each year from abuse, disease, torture, and neglect. Eighty percent of those sold into sexual slavery are under 24, and some are as young as six years old.
• A human trafficker can earn 20 times what he or she paid for a girl. Provided the girl was not physically brutalized to the point of ruining her beauty, the pimp could sell her again for a greater price because he had trained her and broken her spirit, which saves future buyers the hassle. A 2003 study in the Netherlands found that, on average, a single sex slave earned her pimp at least $250,000 a year.
• Although human trafficking is often a hidden crime and accurate statistics are difficult to obtain, researchers estimate that more than 80% of trafficking victims are female. Over 50% of human trafficking victims are children._[14]
• More than 30% of all trafficking cases in 2007-2008 involved children being sold into the sex industry.
• The Western presence in Kosovo, such as NATO troops and civilians, have fueled the rapid growth of sex trafficking and forced prostitution. Amnesty International has reported that NATO soldiers, UN police, and Western aid workers “operated with near impunity in exploiting the victims of the sex traffickers.
• Human trafficking is the only area of transnational crime in which women are significantly represented—as victims, as perpetrators, and as activists fighting this crime.
• Global warming and severe natural disasters have left millions homeless and impoverished, which has created desperate people easily exploited by human traffickers.
• Over 71% of trafficked children show suicidal tendencies.
• After sex, the most common form of human trafficking is forced labor. Researchers argue that as the economic crisis deepens, the number of people trafficked for forced labor will increase.
• Most human trafficking in the United States occurs in New York, California, and Florida._[14]
• According to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), over the past 30 years, over 30 million children have been sexually exploited through human trafficking._[
• Sex traffickers often recruit children because not only are children more unsuspecting and vulnerable than adults, but there is also a high market demand for young victims. Traffickers target victims on the telephone, on the Internet, through friends, at the mall, and in after-school programs.
• Women are trafficked to the U.S. largely to work in the sex industry (including strip clubs, peep and touch shows, massage parlors that offer sexual services, and prostitution). They are also trafficked to work in sweatshops, domestic servitude, and agricultural work.
• Sex traffickers use a variety of ways to “condition” their victims, including subjecting them to starvation, rape, gang rape, physical abuse, beating, confinement, threats of violence toward the victim and victim’s family, forced drug use, and shame.
• Family members will often sell children and other family members into slavery; the younger the victim, the more money the trafficker receives. For example, a 10-year-old named Gita was sold into a brothel by her aunt. The now 22-year-old recalls that when she refused to work, the older girls held her down and stuck a piece of cloth in her mouth so no one would hear her scream as she was raped by a customer. She would later contract HIV.
• Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises because it holds relatively low risk with high profit potential. Criminal organizations are increasingly attracted to human trafficking because, unlike drugs, humans can be sold repeatedly.
• Human trafficking is estimated to surpass the drug trade in less than five years. Journalist Victor Malarek reports that it is primarily men who are driving human trafficking, specifically trafficking for sex.
• Victims of human trafficking suffer devastating physical and psychological harm. However, due to language barriers, lack of knowledge about available services, and the frequency with which traffickers move victims, human trafficking victims and their perpetrators are difficult to catch.
• In approximately 54% of human trafficking cases, the recruiter is a stranger, and in 46% of the cases, the recruiters know the victim. Fifty-two percent of human trafficking recruiters are men, 42% are women, and 6% are both men and women.
• Human trafficking around the globe is estimated to generate a profit of anywhere from $9 billion to $31.6 billion. Half of these profits are made in industrialized countries.
• Some human traffickers recruit handicapped young girls, such as those suffering from Down Syndrome, into the sex industry._[
• According to the FBI, a large human-trafficking organization in California in 2008 not only physically threatened and beat girls as young as 12 to work as prostitutes, they also regularly threatened them with witchcraft.
• Human trafficking is a global phenomenon that is fueled by poverty and gender discrimination.
• Human traffickers often work with corrupt government officials to obtain travel documents and seize passports.
• Women and girls from racial minorities in the U.S. are disproportionately recruited by sex traffickers in the U.S.
• Airports are often used by human traffickers to hold “slave auctions,” where women and children are sold into prostitution.
• Human traffickers are increasingly trafficking pregnant women for their newborns. Babies are sold on the black market, where the profit is divided between the traffickers, doctors, lawyers, border officials, and others. The mother is usually paid less than what is promised her, citing the cost of travel and creating false documents. A mother might receive as little as a few hundred dollars for her baby.
• Due to globalization, every continent of the world has been involved in human trafficking, including a country as small as Iceland.
• Many times, if a sex slave is arrested, she is imprisoned while her trafficker is able to buy his way out of trouble.
• Today, slaves are cheaper than they have ever been in history. The population explosion has created a great supply of workers, and globalization has created people who are vulnerable and easily enslaved._[14]
• Human trafficking has been reported in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and in some U.S. territories.
• The FBI estimates that over 100,000 children and young women are trafficked in America today. They range in age from nine to 19, with the average being age 11. Many victims are not just runaways or abandoned, but are from “good” families who are coerced by clever traffickers.
• Human trafficking victims face physical risks, such as drug and alcohol addiction, contracting STDs, sterility, miscarriages, forced abortions, vaginal and anal trauma, among others. Psychological effects include developing clinical depression, personality and dissociative disorders, suicidal tendencies, Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome._[14]
• The largest human trafficking case in recent U.S. history occurred in Hawaii in 2010. Global Horizons Manpower, Inc., a labor-recruiting company, bought 400 immigrants in 2004 from Thailand to work on farms in Hawaii. They were lured with false promises of high-paying farm work, but instead their passports were taken away and they were held in forced servitude until they were rescued in 2010.
• According to the U.S. State Department, human trafficking is one of the greatest human rights challenges of this century, both in the United States and around the world.
• Today, a slave costs about $90 on average worldwide.

 

The cast and crew of “A Parent’s Worst Nightmare” are hoping that this movie will bring more awareness about sex trafficking in America.

Starring Dean Cain, Kristy Swanson, Sophie Bolen, Mark Boyd, Deon Hunt, Shane Carson, Tevis Marcum, and more,  “A Parent’s Worst Nightmare” is a movie you won’t soon forget.

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