42,000 Adults And Children Kept As Slaves Rescued, Millions Still In Bondage

42,000 Adults And Children Kept As Slaves Rescued, Millions Still In Bondage

Modern-day slavery is a huge issue globally:

More than 42,000 adults and children kept as slaves, forced into prostitution or otherwise trafficked were discovered by authorities around the world in 2011, according to a new report by the U.S. State Department. However this figure was a tiny fraction of the estimated number of people held in bondage with the International Labor Organization estimating earlier this month that there are about 20.9 million victims of modern slavery, the State Department Trafficking in Persons Report noted. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003, foreign governments must supply information about trafficking investigations and prosecutions to the State Department in order to be considered by the U.S. as working to eliminate slavery.

The report details the problem of trafficking in countries around the world, including victims’ accounts. “I walk around and carry the physical scars of the torture you put me through. The cigarette burns, the knife carvings, the piercings … how a human being can see humor in the torture, manipulation, and brainwashing of another human being is beyond comprehension. You have given me a life sentence,” it quotes a victim of sex trafficking in the U.S. as telling her trafficker at his sentencing.

Another trafficking survivor in the U.S. named “Tonya” said she “always felt like a criminal.”

“I never felt like a victim at all. Victims don’t do time in jail, they work on the healing process. I was a criminal because I spent time in jail,” she said.

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