A Sex Trade Market in America?

In early 2004, Americans were shocked by "The Girls Next Door", an article in the New York Times that alleged that there was an illegal sex trade operation going on right in their back yards. This article, written by Peter Landesman, was the first of its kind, documenting the sex trade in the U.S. After this, notions that America was immune to such atrocities expelled and the U.S. faced the reality that the sex trade was real, and ubiquitous. This evil transcends all cultures and boarders. However, since then very little has been done to address the issue and help these defenseless, persecuted women. This paper seeks to examine the trade, its victims, what can be done, and what is being done by the U.S. and the U.N.

Article 3, paragraph (a), of the U.N.'s Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons states, "'Trafficking in persons' shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include...the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual
exploitation," (http://www.unodc.org/unodc/trafficking_human_beings.html). U.S. laws use the terms "force, fraud, and coercion" to define trafficking (Ellerman).

It is probable that over 30 million women have been exploited in the sex trade since the mid-70's (http://deepthought.armory.com/~leavitt/women.html). According to the U.S. State Department and the U.N. two million women and girls become part of the sex trade every year (http://www.womensfreedom.org/