You are making this up out of whole cloth.
Go read the origin of this post. It refers to 100,000 women and children trafficked in this country. No where does it say "sexual trafficked" in relation to that number. Moreover, no where does it infer the 100,000 number refers to "underage prostitutes."
You've made that inference and then go on to try and defeat the inference you've made up out of whole cloth.
Go read the origin of this post. It refers to 100,000 women and children trafficked in this country. No where does it say "sexual trafficked" in relation to that number. Moreover, no where does it infer the 100,000 number refers to "underage prostitutes."
In the context of the story, I’m sticking with my interpretation that it’s sex trafficking. The article’s headline is “Teen Girls Tell Their Stories of Sex Trafficking and Exploitation in U.S.” It goes on to say “International Sex Trafficking Is a Well-Known Problem, But It Happens Here as Well” and “The FBI estimates that well over 100,000 children and young women are trafficked in America today. They range in age from 9 to 19, with the average age being 11.” In the context, “trafficked” in the last sentence can only mean “sex trafficked.” Sex trafficking is defined as follows: “The term ‘sex trafficking' means the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.” (Source: http://www.bayswan.org/traffick/deftraffickUS.html)
The 100,000 figure includes both children and non-children, as it ranges from 9 to 19, and those who have attained the age of 18 are no longer children (at least under the law). However, the average age of 11 implies that there can be relatively few in that number as old as 18 or 19 (otherwise the average would be higher). (Mathematically, at least 78,000 of the 100,000 must be underage (i.e., less than 18) for the range to be 9-19 and the average equal to 11, but realistically a lot more.)
Solson would include pornography in addition to prostitution in the term sex trafficking. However, there can be no pornography without customers either, and it takes many more customers to support a pornographic “actress” than to support a prostitute. So where are all those customers? I doubt that they exist in anything like the required numbers.
Several people on this thread (e.g., lastchance) have said the problem of sex trafficking is growing. It may or may not be; it’s impossible to tell without accurate time-series data, which are in very short supply (as demonstrated by the subject article of this thread). No one’s personal experience of such a rare phenomenon permits a valid statement about whether it is widespread or growing.
My main point remains: stories in the press based on statistics are often dead wrong, and no careful reader can afford to drop his/her defense of skepticism.