The May online edition of Vanity Fair proclaims human trafficking – the commercial sexual exploitation of children and women via the Internet, strip clubs, escort services, and on-street prostitution - is on its way to becoming one of the worst crimes in America. Although much of the focus on this issue has involved foreign-born victims smuggled into the United States, a sizeable number are “the girls next door” – American girls as young as 13 who fall prey to pimps after being subjected to the pimp’s careful grooming. Victims frequently come from dysfunctional families with no positive male role model and little emotional support.
Two of the central figures in the article are young teen girls, induced by promises of heroin to fuel their addictions, whose pimp repeatedly raped and beat them and forced them to perform sex acts with many men in Hartford and surrounding towns.
