By Alanna Ketler

As much as no one wants to talk about it, it’s important that we do. Unfortunately the sad reality is that child sex-trafficking is an epidemic in this day and age. While many people would consider this crime as bad as homicide, more often than not, we as a society are turning a blind eye to this issue. In fact, I’m curious to see how many hits this article receives as this topic tends to fall under the don’t ask, don’t tell category, especially because despite the growing industry the mainstream media remains largely silent.

Yes, children are being drugged, kidnapped, and sold by actual pimps in exchange for sex — let that sink in for a moment. The fact of the matter is that turning a blind eye to this issue will never make it go away, despite how much we wish it would. What makes matters even worse is that American foster care is gravely letting us down, as it turns out the majority of children getting sold in this way come straight from the foster care system. These children, who are supposed to be protected by the state, are the ones who are suffering the most. As if they weren’t already suffering from their placement in this deeply corrupt system.

Sadly, this system includes Child Protective Services, which have the actual power and capacity to remove children from their families and potentially place them in much more severe circumstances.

In most cases involving corruption in our system, to find out the motive always follow the money, in this instance foster children are more profitable for caretakers and every state receives money directly from the federal government for each child placed in foster care. This is certainly a conflict of interest and likely because of this motive, or much more sinister ones, foster care services have been known to willingly give up children to known child traffickers and sex offenders. And, surprise, surprise, hundreds of children, yes, hundreds go missing each year from the foster care system.

Michael Dolce, Of Counsel at the law firm, Cohen Milstein summed up this unfortunate phenomenon of the statistical relationship between the foster care system and sexual abuse of minors,

Most people don’t know about our nation’s foster care to sex trafficking pipeline, but the facts are sobering. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) found that “of the more than 18,500 endangered runaways reported to NCMEC in 2016, one in six were likely victims of child sex trafficking. Of those, 86 percent were in the care of social services when they went missing.” The outcomes of law enforcement efforts against sex traffickers repeatedly support the NCMEC estimate. In a 2013 FBI 70-city nationwide raid, 60 percent of the victims came from foster care or group homes. In 2014, New York authorities estimated that 85 percent of sex trafficking victims were previously in the child welfare system. In 2012, Connecticut police rescued 88 children from sex trafficking; 86 were from the child welfare system. And even more alarming: the FBI discovered in a 2014 nationwide raid that many foster children rescued from sex traffickers, including children as young as 11, were never reported missing by child welfare authorities.” [Source]

Why Does The Mainstream Media Remain Silent?

Well, for some of you reading this it may seem obvious, to others maybe not so much. We all know how the media loves the fear/bad news/ shock value, some on one hand you would expect them to be covering this issue a lot, but unfortunately it seems quite obvious that in some way they are tied into this massive cover up. Clearly, we know for sure that this is an issue, and that it’s happening, but how often do you hear about it on the news or from your governments? This is certainly something to ponder. The lack of attention and discussion around this issue on the media and government is very telling, to say the least.

Dolce added,

Children are learning all the time, and in abusive foster or group homes they learn that their worth as humans is not intrinsic. Their worth is what the abusive caregiver gets from them, whether simply a paycheck from the state or their bodies for sex, as happened to some of my clients. This conditions them to be subservient to pimps—giving all they have in exchange for essential needs, like food and shelter. As one of my clients put it, after extensive physical and sexual abuse in state care, the day she turned 18 and left the system with no community support, job or money, she saw herself in one way: “There was a gold mine between my legs.” [Source]

Final Thoughts

The fact of the matter is that the longer we remain silent around the issue the more it will continue and grow. There are groups that are taking a stand against these horrific crimes and they need all of the support, funding and attention they can receive, click HERE for a list of these organizations. We have to be a voice for the voiceless, and despite the discomfort around this issue, we need to be talking about it, we can all do your part to be the change we wish to see in the world. {…]

This article originally appeared on Collective Evolution.