Children pay the highest price for the evils of the world.

It happens to hundreds of thousands of children in the United States and to millions of children throughout the world. As with any illegal activity, accurate information and data that convey the true scale of the problem are hard to measure accurately. One thing we know with absolute certainty: everything is stolen from them. Their development, their rights to an education, to health, and to grow up in a protected and safe environment free from abuse and exploitation .... all of it, gone.

Traffickers in the United States use terribly coercive methods to recruit their victims. Yes, most trafficking victims in the United States are American youth. They will do, say or spend almost anything to bring young people into their "stable" of prostitutes. They go to these extreme measures simply because the business is so profitable.

In any case, the children under their control become slaves. This may sound like a problem that exists only in distant countries suffering from poverty, warfare and political chaos. Nothing could be further from the truth. Because child trafficking - the commercial sexual exploitation of children - happens in every community in America, including yours.

However, there is success for those who are fighting to save these children. Here are a few of their stories as they appear in Ahava Kids Founder and Director, Raymond Bechard’s Global Blog.

She Has No Place To Go . . .
After being held for months in an apartment against her will. After being turned out as a prostitute, forced to make $1500 a day. After being threatened, addicted to drugs, and abused. After all that, she was finally able to contact the police and make her way out. The police called us immediately and we met "Cal" in a Diner at about 11:00 o'clock one night a few days ago.

She was terrified. Terrified of strangers. Terrified of the pimp from whom she had escaped. Terrified to face tomorrow. Her fears were justified. While one of our female Intervention Specialists sat talking quietly with Cal on one side of the empty diner, I sat with three detectives in a booth along the opposite wall. The three of them explained to me what they already knew about Cal's story.

She had been coerced by a man she thought she knew. He had taken her to his apartment and bought her nice things. He made promises. He treated her very well...for the first few weeks. Then, he told her it was time to go to work. If she refused, he said, he would kill her family.

So she went to work.

He sold her online, in strip clubs and in the back rooms of bars. He sold her any way and every way he could. And he made a lot of money. All the while keeping her high, and never letting her leave his sight. Then, one day, he left her alone in a hotel room just long enough for her to make a phone call. That was the beginning of her escape.

But now, there is no place for her to go. And that is what terrifies her the most. The man who held her captive, her pimp, is constantly looking for her. He wants her to go back to work and he knows she can be dangerous to him in Court.

As the detectives finished telling me Cal's story, I asked, "Now what?" They simply said, "We thought you could tell us what to do." As I looked over the to the corner booth where the young girl was talking to our staff member, another detective asked, "Is your safe house ready yet?" The pit in my stomach got heavier and turned over a few times. "No, not yet," I said. "But, we'll figure something out."

You see, being rescued from a trafficker, a modern-day slave handler of the worst kind, is only the first step to freedom. Cal and hundreds of thousands of young people just like her across the United States will not know true freedom until they can escape from the awful and intentional fear that has been forced into them.

The only way to release them from the chains of fear is to get them somewhere safe, somewhere they can feel at home, where no one is trying to get to them. That's why the Ahava Kids Safe House is such a priority.

As I tried to think of options for Cal, the detective finished by saying, "Well, I hope you guys open your safe house soon. We're going to have a lot more girls like Cal coming your way." Rescued, but not free. Escaped, but still in prison. We can get them out, but getting them out is not enough. We must give them sanctuary to flee from fear and rebuild their lives.

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You Can’t Have Her . . .
Some years, Thanksgiving doesn't really work. Some years, the day doesn't provide the reflection or depth it promises. It falls short. It's not Thanksgiving's fault. It's ours.

It's our fault that we don't build Thanksgiving into every day of the year. Thanksgiving is and always has been about deliverance. Being delivered from trouble, repression, sickness, danger and all other evils, has motivated us to give thanks on this one day. Yet, we rarely stop to thank God for the deliverance we have been given ever day of our lives. We shouldn't expect Thanksgiving to make up for all that unexpressed gratitude. That's why Thanksgiving doesn't really work some years.

Except this year.

This year, Thanksgiving worked. This year a group of people answered the call when a young girl was in trouble. She was held captive by pimps and drug dealers. She called for help when a UPS man came to the wrong door. She escaped with the help of a SWAT team. And she went with Ahava Kids when we got the call.

She was delivered and today she is safe. Today she does not have to worry that someone is trying to kill her or sell her. She is safe because when Ahava Kids asked people for help, they came to the Thanksgiving table and saved her life.

So, to the people who answered that call, Thank you. This year, I give thanks to you on Thanksgiving

And to the people who enslaved her. To the people who imprisoned her mind, her spirit, her soul and her body, I will only say this......

You Can't Have Her.

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Where Is The Baby?
I went out on patrol recently with the New York Police Department Human Trafficking Task Force. NYPD has 30,000 officers, and six of them deal with trafficking. We are working with them because they have nowhere to place young people when they are taken in for prostitution. By law, anyone 17 and under in prostitution is not a criminal, but a victim, so they can't put them in jail. Consequently, they call us for placement 24/7/365. That's one of our biggest challenges, but we have an even bigger challenge.

At about 1:00 a.m. I was sitting in the back seat of an unmarked car as we drove around Hunts Point in The Bronx. This is a notorious section for prostitution. I noticed a young girl walking slowly down and abandoned street. I told the office driving that we needed to double back and see what she was doing. Just as we turned the corner to make our return, I saw the lights of an eighteen-wheeler flash across the street from where the girl was walking. By the time we returned she was gone, but I told the detective, "She's in that truck." As I said that the truck started to pull away. We followed it as it slowly drove a few blocks, then turned, then turned again, driving without any one direction or purpose ... and that's not something truck drivers do in New York. Finally, he pulled over and turned off his lights. We all got out and approached the cab of the truck. The detectives knocked on the doors and opened them. The driver came out first, then the girl. She had been negotiating with him as they were driving slowly around. You don't need the details of what she was doing for the $40 he paid her. The important parts are these:

• She told us her name which I can't tell you here. Let's call her "Nan."
• Nan gave us an address where she said she is staying. We have been checking regularly with no success.
• She also told us she had to work all day and night, every day and night, because she is supporting three men where she is staying. They all have drug addictions and so does she. Nane is supporting four drug habits as a prostitute.
• Though she looks older, she is probably no older than18, and says she has been on the streets for five years. This makes sense since the average age of females entering prostitution in the US is 13.
• Okay, here's the hard part. According to Nan, and from her still protruding belly and naval, we have no reason not to believe her, she gave birth only seven days prior to finding her in the truck. She said that after giving birth, she was out working the streets two days later.
• We are doing everything we can to find the baby. It's a boy. She is not telling the truth as to what happened to the child after she gave birth in the hospital. We can't find the boy and neither can the police. The difficulty is that unwanted children are often sold here.
• Nan refused to come with us or accept any help. (It was freezing that night and she had only flip-flops on her feet.)
• We will keep searching for the Nan and try to determine the fate of her baby. Check back here for updates.

_______________________________

Girl Not Coming Back . . .
I was directed to a small house on the western edge of the village where male tourists were coming and going. It was about 2:30 PM. Things are very quiet in the afternoon, and the less people on site the less trouble we have. I went up to the door, which was more like a blanket hanging by a few nails, than a real door. Someone would be watching - so I just waited.

A woman put her head around the hanging blanket and stared at me. She was trying to intimidate me, but I just returned the look. I shrugged my arms making sure she noticed that I was holding American money in my hand. Without speaking, I was asking her, “Well?” She said, “Twenty.” With one movement she took the $20 from my hand while pushing aside the old blanket. I went through and almost gagged at the smell inside. She walked and pointed, telling me I had to “pick, just pick.” She took me down a hall and up a narrow stairway to a room where five very young girls and boys were sitting and drinking sodas. Two boys, three girls. They all just looked at me with blank stares – no fear or emotion at all.

The youngest was perhaps 10 years old. The oldest, perhaps 13. The woman told me that the $20 I paid was “for the look, just pick,” but that to have, “party” would be $40. I intentionally stared at the youngest for a long time, a girl. I wanted to take them all out, but we had to bring this little one out to prove this was happening here, in this house. If I could get her to some authorities we could trust, then we could get enough pressure on the local police to shut the place down – leading to the rescue of all the kids.

The woman was looking at me very hard. She was smart not to trust me. I knew I would have to get her interested in having me become a customer fast, rather than throwing me out. I pointed to the little girl and said, “So, it’s like, a few hundred bucks to take her with me?” I started to reach in my pocket. The woman said, “More! No. Wait. I have to see. Maybe you can’t take with you.”

I wasn’t leaving without this little girl. And I wasn’t going to try to come back later. The woman would certainly bring in others to check me out, or worse. I had to use her greed right there and then. It was now or maybe never.

I was wearing cargo pants with lots of pockets. In each was a separate amount of money. I do this so I don’t have to count cash. I just remember the amount of cash in each pocket and reach into whatever pocket is necessary for a particular situation.

I reached into the $500 pocket.

A few minutes later I was leaving with the young girl. I didn’t hold her hand. I just pointed which direction she should walk. It’s frightening how robotic these children become. The will do whatever you tell them. They become accustomed to being abused at the slightest infraction of behavior so they rarely question anything adults tell them to do, especially men.

In fact, one girl was placed with a wonderful American couple. They have four of their own children, but wanted to help others who were victims of trafficking. They were told that a girl would be coming to stay with them, but that she was very quiet, almost non-communicative. Expecting a teenage girl, they were shocked to find that the little victim was only six years old. They were very gentle and kind to her from the minute she arrived. They brought the girl to her new bedroom which they had decorated especially for her and got her settled in so she would feel safe. That night she ate a big dinner and they tucked her into bed. The husband was tired and went to bed while the wife was catching up on some computer work downstairs. An hour later, the little girl came into the parents bedroom, took off her clothes and got into bed with the husband. He woke up in horror. Her only words were, “What do you want me to do first?”

This was a six-year old girl who was already trained to satisfy men. In fact, she believed that was why she was alive. That belief becomes so entrenched that they think rape is normal; that it is expected of them.

So, I knew the little $500 girl would stay close to me as we walked out.

There was a car waiting for us across the street in an alley. My driver was a brave man from a nearby ministry who was afraid someone in the area would recognize him and bring retribution. As the little girl and I passed through the blanket to the sunlight outside, the woman looked anxious. She still wasn’t quite sure if she should be letting me take her. She might get in trouble with someone later on, but $500 was just too tempting. So, she made me a quick offer, “Bring back girl, get some money!” She wasn’t selling her, she was renting her.

I looked across the street to the car that was waiting to take us away. The motor was running and they were motioning for me to get in. Before we crossed the street together, I turned to the woman and said, “Girl not coming back.”

The next day when we returned to the house for the other children, everyone was gone.