Dara Metcalfe is a sophomore telecommunications major and writes for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper. Write to Dara at djmetcalfe@bsu.edu.

Nov. 18 at 6:00 pm I visited the student center to watch a screening of a sex trafficking documentary, hosted by IJM (International Justice Mission), which was called "Sex and Money: a National Search on Human Worth." IJM is a global organization that started four years ago to raise awareness for several different causes by putting on events. One of these events is “No Slave November” which happens every year to raise awareness about human trafficking.

Growing up, I was aware of prostitution and sex trafficking, but I was not educated about the differences between the two.

The difference between prostitution and sex trafficking is that prostitution is voluntary sex work and human trafficking is forced sex labor with other people for money.

According to live58.org, "80% of trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and 19% involves labor exploitation." As a child, I didn’t think that prostitution and sex trafficking could happen to girls my age and in my country. This is probably because I didn’t like or understand the idea of women selling their bodies for money or having a pimp who beats them.

The average beginning age of human trafficking in the United is between 12-14.

When I was that age, I never even thought about sex, let alone running away from home only to have a stranger take advantage of me.

Usually pimps look for girls and some boys who are runaways, in abusive or sexually abusive relationships at home or those that have low self-esteem.

I also didn’t believe that all pimps abuse their “hoes” because I’ve never witnessed it, nor have I seen a lot of bad pimps in movies, only funny ones. I guess you can say we are all lucky if we never witness or have been a victim to this disturbing “work.” 

While watching this documentary, I was enraged that so few people were aware of human trafficking in America; it just shows that people can be naïve. America is supposed to be "The Land of the Free," but we have an underground sex industry that promotes "modern-day slavery.”

I am not saying everyone is turning the other cheek to this heinous crime. There are plenty of good and dutiful police officers that go undercover to stop sex trafficking chains and prostitution.

The United States is one of the top three destinations for sex trafficking victims. The top four states are California, New York, Texas and Nevada. Victims of sex trafficking are taken away from their homes in the U.S. and other countries around the world. The sex industry has many disguises, and forces people to "work" in sweatshops, pornographic situations, brothels and “massage parlors.”

If I didn't go to the IJM documentary, I would still be in the dark concerning human trafficking. Human trafficking needs to be pulled out of obscurity.

As senior IJM president Lauren Baney said, "Fighting sex trafficking is important to me because it is a modern-day slavery. This issue is so important to fight."

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