Sex Slave Trade Enters the U.S

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 27, 2000 | by Catherine Edwards, | James Harder

RELATED ARTICLE: The Sex Trade and HIV/AIDS

International Justice Mission investigator Bob Mosier met the 17-year-old girl in Bombay. A virgin kidnapped from her village in West Bengal at age 14, she was drugged and woke up in a brothel where she was beaten and forced to have sex as many as 25 times a day. By age 17 she had undergone three abortions, which she had to pay for with tips from the long lines of clients she was made to service.

For three years the teen-ager repeatedly tried to escape. Now she has AIDS and will be allowed by the traffickers to go home to die, Mosier tells Insight.

"A virgin like her can cost a customer more than $10,000," he says. "Some mistakenly assume that sex with a virgin can purify them of AIDS. Other customers with AIDS do not like to use condoms and spread the disease that way. Governments need to be concerned about this trade from a humanitarian point of view but also from a public-health point of view -- and I don't see that happening."

-- CE