The Unseen (Essay)

Slavery is the imprisonment of one or more individuals by taking away their choice and freedom to leave and make their own decisions. Slavery has been traced back to ancient times. It is mentioned in the Bible and in today’s history books. Slavery was and is an unseen issue, but children in slavery is an unfair and depressing issue that many people are blindingly looking away from because it is pressed upon children, it is an emotional issue to witness and it is extremely hard to end.
Many children are sold into slavery because of poverty, entertainment and their age. Children are not granted with the choice whether or not they are put into slavery; some times they are brought into slavery by an alternative method. Children will either work as sex slaves, workers on cocoa or coffee bean farms, etc. In many poor regions, parents will sell their children in order to pay off a debt or a general necessity. As parents sell their children, others are fooling them into the working field of sex slavery. They offer them a job that will help earn money for their family, then without any say they are sold to prostitution. For example, Thailand is one of the major regions of child prostitution. It has a higher income than Google, Nike, and Starbucks combined. In addition to poverty and entertainment, children are the main focus in sex slavery because they are easily manipulated; making it easier for the slave holder to brainwash a child.
Because of slavery, the mental stability of the children has evolved into a state of unhealthy thoughts. In the documentary Call + Response, they show how young girls and boys from the age of four through seventeen are told that having sexual relations with an adult is an everyday part of life and the more they have the better. Slave holders also tell the children that the police are bad and they will put them in jail for prostitution. A thirteen year old girl named Lucilia was brought into human trafficking in the United States. Her holder told her “‘All you got to do is go up to the car in front of us,’ said Romeo, the young black man with heavy-lidded eyes at the wheel. ‘You charge him whatever you want to charge him, you ask if he’s police or a pimp. He’s gonna give you money, and then you’re gonna just do whatever he wants you to do real quick. It’s just a one-minute thing.’ He sent her out. She went up to the other car. The man inside drove her to one of the big parking lots nearby, close to the Belt Parkway. He paid her $500, had sex with her, and then dropped her off. ‘Where the money?’ Romeo asked her when she climbed back inside his car. ‘Let me count it.’ Lucilia took the cash out of her pocket and watched him flip through the bills. ‘Can I have my money back?’ she asked. ‘You not getting your money back!’ he said. ‘You making this money for me to take care of you.’ And then he explained what he called “the Game,” how he would love her and be her “daddy,” how he would take care of her and buy her whatever she wanted, as long as she brought him money. ‘Let me tell you,’ he said. ‘I’m a pimp, and you’re a ho.’ ‘What do you mean I’m a ho?’ she asked. She knew the word only as an insult, as in, you’re nasty. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re a moneymaking ho.’ ‘Is that good?’ she asked. ‘Yeah,’ he told her. ‘That’s good.’”[1] Lucilia was thirteen years old. She should have been in middle school, and enjoying time at the movies with her friends. Instead, she was letting men use her body and being brainwashed that prostitution was good. This was her idea of love.
Slavery takes place in multiple countries including the United States. “Many people are surprised to learn that in sheer numbers, more people around the world are enslaved today ‘than were seized from Africa in 400 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.’”[2] When government decides to take action, deal with corruption within their own organizations and make the punishment outweigh the reward, then maybe something will be done about the issue that exists with slavery. “Industries in which child slaves are used exist in all parts of the world. Children are enslaved in the cotton fields of India, fishing industry in Ghana, charcoal production in Brazil, gold mines in Peru, brick producing kilns of Nepal, stone quarries in south Asia, as camel jockeys in the United Arab Emirates, and as domestic servants and sex slaves all over the world, including in the United States and other developed countries. Because they are more easily manipulated, children are typically given work in the most unhealthy and dangerous conditions.”[3]
Due to the harshness of slavery, every individual should join together to stand up and fight against children in slavery. Many people have started a movement. Call+Response gathered different artists and filmed a documentary to make slavery apparent to today’s society. In their documentary a philosopher, Cornel West, offered his wisdom and his time to put slavery into the raw and truthful perspective that the audience could not see. By judges, officers, politicians, and the public working together to make sure that true justice is served, they are showing love for the victims. “Justice is what love looks like in public!”[4] Protecting and doing right by our victims is love. If everyone pulled together and decided to stop the cycle of crime and victimization, a difference could be achieved. If more people stopped, understood and cared about justice being served, then how many less criminals would be on the street creating more victims? By removing the criminals from our society, our world would be a safer place and this action would be considered an act of love. Children should be protected from evil and the adults in their lives should be the ones to protect.