One day I was searching the internet and I came upon this website named equality now and  the website was last updated in 2017. The website has multiple human trafficking survivor stories. All of the stories really hit me hard although one really hit me harder than the others. It’s title was K’s story and I believe the reason she didn’t want her name on the website is because she was abused so badly. It started when she was 11 and had a 46 year old horse riding instructor. She fell in love with him even though he was 35 years older and he told her that they could own a ranch together, but didn’t have the money. He told this little girl that the only way to make the money was to become a prostitute. He ended up completely isolating her from her family and began “training” her on how to become a prostitute by bringing her to brothels. She explained that her loving and fatherly riding teacher became a lover boy who is a man who lures girls into becoming prostitutes by becoming their boyfriend. At 17 she ran away from home with him and he put her in a brothel. When he put her in there she would not cooperate so he would abuse her and give her affection until she finally became to comply and would prostitute herself.

She worked in various legal brothels throughout Germany. She was prostituted for a span of 10 years and rarely would have days off. She would get up to 20-40 buyers a day and some of the buyers would rape and beat her. K’s pimp took all of the money she earned, so even though she was working like a mad man she didn’t even get to have her money. Her pimp was convicted of pimping in 1970 and had a long criminal record, but still managed to become the manager of K’s brothel in 2001. He would sign things on her behalf to get her employed in various brothels against her will. He even signed a contract making K the manager of the brothel even though she still got prostituted there and still didn’t get to keep the earnings. Finally on April 9th 2011 she called the police for help. An ambulance brought her to the hospital and she was taken care of. The weeks after she was interrogated for 70 hours. When she went to court she was questioned for 20 hours over a 6 day period. While being questioned she had to describe every single detail about every single raping to the court. She won and her pimp was sentenced to 9 years in prison and almost got sentenced to his whole life in prison. The court ruled she should get $1,350,000 in compensation for the money her pimp took from her throughout the years. She said that people think she is a millionaire but isn't and will never see a penny of that money. She fell into deep depression and had to go to therapy to help. This is only one of many survivor stories I have found. I think human trafficking is a bigger issue than most people think in our world today, so the pros and the cons of this very large issue.

The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) did a study with data gathered from 155 different countries about human trafficking in 2017. It is the first global study on human trafficking and what we are doing to help diminish it. The executive director of the UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa said “Many governments are still in denial. There is even neglect when it comes to either reporting on, or prosecuting cases of human trafficking.” He also said that the number of convictions for human trafficking is increasing and that two out of the five counties covered by the UNODC study reported no convictions at all which obviously isn’t remotely close to the truth. According to the study 79% of human trafficking is sexual exploitation. Which is the reason my hook is on a story about someone being sexually exploited, because it is the biggest issue. The majority of sex trafficking is done with women and some women will even traffic other women, so it isn’t all men like some people believe. The second most common type of human trafficking is forced labor and is 18% of people trafficked according to the study. It also mentioned how forced labor is not detected as well as sex trafficking so there may even be more forced labor victims than thought. The saddest part of the whole issue is up to 20% of people being trafficked are children and in some places in Africa it is almost 100%.

Now if the government would just legalize prostitution it would in theory get rid of 79% of the entire matter of human trafficking and how it would minimize the issue immensely. Some women can only make a living off of prostitution, so by making their profession illegal they are out of work or have to face the risks of getting in legal trouble. The problem with making it legal though is then men will assume women's bodies are solely for their pleasure and nothing else. Another point of why it should be legal is that it is voluntary, so what's the harm in that. Well sadly as I have already shown by my story about K is that even though they are in a “legal” brothel or “voluntarily” giving there bodies a majority of the time they are forced to or they will be punished in various ways. My Last point of why someone might want to make it legal is that the government could tax it and make money off of it. In Las Vegas alone the government could have made $25 milloin just off of taxing prostitution. The problem with this theory is that nobody wants to be known as a sex worker so they would just hide it from the government like they already do. To prove this theory is the Dutch government tried it back in 2000 and only 5% of the sex workers registered for it. These are the main reasons that even though it sounds like a great way to fix the issue by making it legal it actually doesn’t work out. I found this information on a website called Pro and Con which helps you better understand the issue. It was last updated in 2018.

If someone would want to help with the issue of human trafficking they can many different ways. First there is the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline. It is a toll free hotline and it will answers calls from anywhere in the country 24/7. They are not apart of the government or an immigration authority, so they don’t need to worry about getting in legal trouble. Another thing that people can do is if they know anyone purchasing sex to report them to a local police department or a hotline like the one I just talked about. An even better way to aid the cause is to have schools educate children better on this subject, so they don’t get trapped in such a cruel industry. The last couple things to do to help is seek training to help better detect a person who is being trafficked or donate money to the organizations that help survivor victims like K.

There is a lot to think about when it comes to the topic human trafficking. The really only upside to such a horrible thing is that it does provide people with a living. Sadly though it hurt thousands in so many different ways. Like the women getting trafficked, the pimps getting put in jail, and us taxpayers paying for such evil people to live in our prisons. Although what I think someone should think about is the individuals like K who want to literally take their own lives over something they have no control over. Remember that if you want to make a difference in this world you can always contribute to the fight against such cruel acts of crime. I would recommend giving money to an organization that helps victims or organizations that help identify illegal activity. Remember by helping someone the world may not change, but you can change the world for that person.