Human trafficking a global challenge

When the group of eight teenagers was first referred to the Preda Home for Girls, the teens were still in shock, having been taken into police custody during a rescue. What they did not realize was they had been victimized and exploited by unscrupulous human traffickers and used like sex slaves by male child abusers. They had been brainwashed — like kindergarten children being wrongly taught that two plus two makes eight. They were easily persuaded and convinced that they were good-for-nothing other than being teenage sex workers earning a pittance. They believed this without question; their parents told them it was a job. Their parents had been colluding with the traffickers and brothel owners.

Some victims of human trafficking are given false promises and money in advance of being abused. They owe debts to the traffickers and are scared to run away. They are captured and enslaved into debt bondage. A cruel form of control and exploitation, a kind of slavery like the days when millions of Africans were trafficked and chained in ships and transported to the Americas and sold like animals in a human auction.