Tonight’s ABC News Primetime Live will air a domestic trafficking story about American girls sold into sexual slavery here in the United States. The piece features Norma Hotaling, founder of SAGE, a non-profit that aims to bring an end to the commercial sexual exploitation of children and adults. Hotaling, an ex-prostitute, also teaches a class to men who are caught soliciting women and girls for sex. Here’s a piece I wrote about Hotaling and the class in March 2005.
Here’s another piece about child exploitation in San Francisco. Each year, more than three thousand girls in San Francisco sell their bodies for sex. Many victims are only 11 or 12 years old; some are as young as nine.
A few facts about sexual slavery:
*A 2001 study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and conducted by Richard Estes and Neil Weiner of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work found that “at least” 250,000 U.S. children are victims of sexual exploitation each year. Approximately 244,000-325,000 youth are at risk of becoming victims of sexual exploitation, according to the report. Many organizations believe the actual numbers to be higher.
*Multiple studies indicate that the average age of entry into prostitution in the United States is between 13 and 14 years of age, with children being sold and trafficked at even younger ages in impoverished areas throughout the world.
*In the United States, findings from the National Survey of Adolescents indicate that as of 1995, 1.8 million youths age 12 to 17 had been sexually assaulted.
*Significant percentages of men have purchased sex at some point during their lives. One study indicated that was the case for 95-percent of men in Thailand, and was true for 75-percent of men living in London. (PROMISED, “Facts About Prostitution, and Far Eastern Economic Review, February 13, 1992, p. 29)
The story airs tonight at 10:00 pm EST/PST.
Norma Hotaling, SAGE Founder and Executive Director, has been working with Primetime on this story for several months now. The show will focus on two young women ripped from their lives by violent pimps, held in horrific situations and then rescued by persistent heroes. The story definitively portrays the reality that trafficking of American women and girls is happening right here on American soil.
“I was assigned this story in late August 2005. After several weeks of research, I reached out to Norma, given her expertise in this area. Norma and her work and the work of other organizations like SAGE have informed the way I perceive this horrific problem. I want to thank Norma Hotaling for her tremendous work in this area and for helping to inform the way in which we are reporting this story.”
-Mark Stanoch, ABC News Primetime Live Producer
