Story highlights Kevin McCarthy: Human trafficking is a growing and urgent evil in need of immediate action

The House of Representatives recognizes this reality and is introducing 13 pieces of legislation to address the issue

Kevin McCarthy is the Republican representative for California's 23rd District and the house majority leader. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) She ran away from home. She was only 15 when the man she moved in with and thought she loved took her to a party and told her she had to sleep with somebody for money. She resisted. His pressure continued. She thought it would be a one-time deal. It wasn't.

For weeks, every night, she was taken from bar to bar as the man she had trusted advertised her to other men and sold her. She was only saved by a tip to the police and intervention by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement homeland security investigations special agent. Today, the man who trafficked her is finishing the second year of his 12-year prison sentence, as the girl he exploited tries to return to a semi-normal life.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy

As true as it is sobering, this young woman's story is far from isolated. It is repeated, frequently with even more disturbing details, in towns and cities across our nation. Children are sold on the black market. Young women are forced into prostitution. Immigrants are pressed to work for little or no wages. Each and every one is an affront to our human dignity, our basic freedoms and our common call to care for, not abuse, those who are vulnerable and in need.

The International Labor Organization estimates that 20.9 million people are trafficked globally. Of those, 68% are subjected to forced labor, 26% are children and 55% are women and girls. And around 4.5 million are victims of forced sexual exploitation. It all adds up to a $150 billion industry worldwide.

But human trafficking -- sex trafficking, forced labor and other modern forms of slavery -- is not some foreign evil. In America, the National Human Trafficking Hotline recorded 7,572 human trafficking cases reported in 2016, the most -- 1,323 -- coming from my home state of California. Of the total number of cases, 5,551 reported were for sex trafficking and 1,057 for labor trafficking.