Trucks in Kansas and Missouri are carrying more than corn and wheat. Human-trafficking victim support groups say truckers that voyage north and south on Interstate 35 are hauling women and children trapped in the sex trade.
“Not only the Midwest but I think the country as a whole has an unrecognized problem concerning the trafficking of U.S. citizens into the commercial sex industry,” Lisa Thompson, liaison for the abolition of sexual trafficking for Salvation Army, told Family News in Focus.
The State Department estimates that 100,000 children in the U.S. are at risk of becoming trafficking victims.
“They are in every city,” said Linda Smith, founder of Shared Hope International and a former member of Congress. “They are being sold at truck stops, strip joints, massage parlors and often out of homes, marketed online or on the streets. But they are our little girls.”
Daniel Weiss, senior analyst of media and sexuality for Focus on the Family Action, said America needs to wake up to the pervasive problem.
“I think most people do not realize this is going on, they pay no attention to it, therefore many of them are probably missing the signs of people being trafficked right around them – right in their neighborhoods.”
