Girls Like Us - Prologue

Recently, I came across a memoir by Rachel Lloyd entitled Girls Like Us - Fighting For A World Where Girls Are Not For Sale, which crosses perspectives using both  her work with GEMS: Girls Educational and Mentoring Services in New York City and her own personal journey and experience in the trafficking world.

I would encourage you strongly to read this book, along with their documentary, entitled Very Young Girls, which is available via Netflix. My personal notes, found in this blog, are only highlights, and the most moving pieces of this book are found in the individual stories, as well as the past that inspired Rachel Lloyd to found GEMS. Also, my personal interest areas reflect only a small portion of the vast amount of work to be done within this field of work. I tend to focus on legislative reform, whereas many volunteers are far more interested in mentoring and restoration, or rescue. All of these areas are equally vital to ending the problem, so reading this book will shed further light on areas I may gloss over due to it not being my specific area of work and research.


Prologue:

The book starts by describing an eleven (11) year old girl who shares the interests of the average child her age. The main difference they list is that" over the last year of her life, she's been trafficked up and down the East Coast by a 29 year old pimp and sold nightly on Craigslist to adult men who ignore her dimples and her baby fat and purchase her for sex."

GEMS is the only nonprofit in the state of NY designed to serve victims of CSEC.

The NYPD brings a young girl to speak with Rachel, and during the inquiry she learns that the girl is only 11 years old. She has been well trained to give standard answers that do not incriminate her pimp. She was proud to be able to educate Rachel about which johns to avoid, which ones like it dirty (white men), and that she carried weapons in case they tried to hurt her. She was pleased that her 12 year old sister introduced her to her "boyfriend" and disdainful of the idea that they would work a track instead of using the internet to find johns. Remember; this girl is ELEVEN. It is easier to imagine this occurring in Thailand, but the reality is that she is a US citizen being trafficked domestically. According to the 2001 University of Pennsylvania study on CSEC in North America, 200,000-300,000 adolescents are at risk for CSEC in the US every year.


UNICEF, the international nongovernmental organization for the protection of children, estimates that 1.2 million children and youth are commercially sexually exploited every year worldwide.  While sex tourism is an issue, the majority of sexual exploitation occurs within a country's own borders and involves native children. The issue affects every continent.

An excerpt from the book particularly stood out to me:
(I've added the bold and underlines myself to emphasize particular statistics.)
"When I tell people that the agency I run serves over 300 girls a year in the NYC metro area alone who've been trafficked for sexual purposes, they're invariably stunned. When I tell them that the girls and young women we serve are predominantly US citizens, their shock and sympathy turn to utter incomprehension... To talk about trafficking conjures images of Thai girls in shackles, Russian girls held at gunpoint by the mob, illegal border crossings, fake passports, and captivity. It seems ludicrous and unthinkable that it's happening in America to American children. It's often not until you explain that this phenomenon is what is commonly called "teen prostitution" that recognition dawns. "Oh that... but that's different. Teen prostitutes choose to be doing that; aren't they normally on drugs or something?" In under 3 minutes, they've gone from sympathy to confusion to blame. Not because the issue is any different, not because the violence isn't as real, not because the girls aren't as scared, but simply because borders haven't been crossed, simply because the victims are American."

The Internet has become a dangerous place for these girls. It is easy for men to buy girls online from their laptops. No lurking in streets, no "curb-crawling in shady areas. They bought sex online from a child like they were paying a bill, ordering a pair of shoes, booking a vacation."

It was so easy for this girl to be lured. She was a foster child bounced from home to home, her two older sisters had also been trafficked, and her "boyfriend" bought her a cheap trinket and showed her affection. The NY Senate refused to pass a bill that would have created services and support for girls like her and had them treated as victims instead of criminals.