by Nikki Everett

Created on: December 06, 2009   Last Updated: December 07, 2009

"Human trafficking is a violation of the human body, mind and spirit. For this vile practice to be taking place in a country that the world looks to as a beacon of freedom... is a terrible irony and an utter tragedy." United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, October 2006.

Recently, the highly publicized investigation into the selling, rape, and subsequent murder of 5 year old Shaniya Davis, from Fayetteville, N.C., has brought the severity of the problems that are faced globally to light with a new twist. Americans watched in shock and horror as details revealed that for the mere price of drug debt, a mother was capable of selling off her own child to sexual slavery.

Clips of the security camera caught the girl's last images as she clung to the previously incarcerated man. He carried her into the hotel elevator without Shaniya knowing what lay ahead. As a viewer of the video, you could not help but gasp with the question in your mind - How could a mother allow this to be the fate of her beautiful little girl?

Child slavery is impossible to conceptualize to those who do not understand the cruel nature of someone who would benefit from the misery of children. When the label is attached to the heinous crime of trafficking humans for sex, better known as child prostitution, it becomes even more incomprehensible.

However, slavery of children in relation to prostitution at the hands of villainous criminals is more prevalent than most of us ever fathomed and goes on right under everyone's noses.

Most statistical numbers desensitize the atrocious reality of a serious problem plaguing every country in the world. The irony of the following averages is that America, known as the land of the free and the first to fight for human rights in other countries, is more susceptible to these crimes within its very own borders than anyone realizes.

The current statistics cited from the organization Giving Children Hope show that:

In the U.S. alone, between 100,000 and 400,000 children are at risk for sex trafficking each year.

On the streets of the U.S. those numbers have increased dramatically as 2.8 million children are homeless and a third of those will be lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home.

The average age for a child to become involved in pornography and prostitution is 12 - 14 and this average is prominently active in human trafficking rings in over 90 American cities as found by the Free the Slaves research.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimates that 50,000 people are trafficked into or transited through the U.S.A. annually as sex slaves, domestics, garment, and agricultural slaves.

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