Remember the movie “Pretty Baby” with Brooke Shields, when she was about 11 or 12, and she was a child prostitute?
The setting was turn of the 20th century New Orleans, as a I recall. I heard that it was based on some true stories of child prostitutes.
Point being, prostitution, including prostitution involving underage girls, has been going on long before many of us were born. I applaud the work of those fighting against this, but, just saying, it’s not really a new problem.
It isn’t a new problem, but it seems the sheer SCALE of the problem is now the problem. In days gone by (actually not that long ago - in living memory for a lot of people), people would have to receive pornographic materials in plain brown wrappers sent through the mails. Then Hugh Hefner came along, “adult” stores, mainstream porn at movie theaters. Then it all broke loose with the Internet delivering anything you want directly to you wherever you are.
I’m watching a Netflix / Canadian serial TV show called “Frontier” about trappers and the Hudson Bay Company in Eastern Canada in the late 1700s. It overlays all of our modern ills (extreme violence; homosexuality; kind Indians/evil white man; Amazonian women fighters) on those people back then. It’s beautifully photographed, but that’s about all that’s good about it.
It is also pretty shocking what the Russian soldiers did to under-aged girls in Germany right after WWII. But before that there are youtube videos about Berlin in the 20's being the new Babylon where 5 American dollars bought you ANYTHING.