The story that will end child sex slavery in the world! The lines between fiction and nonfiction are blurring and giving rise to a new form that might best be called "true fiction".
Brought to light are the established mafias that dominate the trade. The big players in Europe today are Russians, Albanians, and Ukrainians (and recently, in Italy, Nigerians). In southeastern Europe, Turkish, Kurdish, Serbian, Greek, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Romanian networks move Eastern European women into Western Europe and the Middle East. Many of these groups simply added human trafficking to existing crime portfolios, often running women alongside traditional contraband, like drugs and arms.
Even those in the group at highest risk-poor young women-tend to see trafficking as something that may happen to someone else, but not to them. In surveys, most victims say that they don't know anyone who's been trafficked. That may be partly because women often conceal this experience, even from their own families. Add desperate poverty and an unhappy household-the standard "push factors"-and the pipeline of likely trafficking victims never runs dry.
By gracefully weaving in interviews with madams and other sexual gatekeepers - and sometimes even the pimps or johns themselves -Bonner constructs an insightful, resonant, and nuanced narrative that details just how complex and massive this problem.
Why do we treat children as victims in cases of sexual abuse, but as soon as money is exchanged, we deem these sexually abused children as "criminals?" Why is there such an overwhelming demand for sex with a child? Are we adequately teaching our children sexual respect? Why are men obsessed with power, property, and the world domination of women? The problem is monumental.