“Selling the girl next door”

Underage sex trade still flourishing online By Amber Lyon and Steve Turnham,                     CNN January 20, 2011

The sex trades have moved off of the streets and onto the web and the girl’s just keep getting younger and younger. This is how the girl next door gets sold. It’s such a sad thing to know about the reality of what is going on. Hundreds of thousands of girls are sold for sex. The most shocking part is that some or most are still under age some barely have gone through puberty. They are under the age of 18 and are sold as sex slaves. The use of online trade has been growing by the minute and some websites make it even easier, for example craigslist. Most are runaways, suffering from psychological problems or drug dependence, picked up and sold by pimps for staggering profits. These girls are forced to make this a job but the pay goes all to the pimps and if they try to quit or leave they are beaten or even threatened to be killed if they don’t do what they are told to. Craigslist is a major influence in this business even though on its website it clearly states that if there is a suspicion of any sexual content they will be asked to remove their ad or they would delete it because they screen everything that goes through their website.  “CNN investigated Craigslist, posting an ad and receiving numerous calls from men seeking sex. That investigation helped spark a national conversation and outrage, as well as a call from 17 attorneys general around the country for Craigslist to shut down its adult services section.” After the site was shut down it migrated to another site. So even though a lot of people try to stop this injustice the fight still continues on to this day and maybe throughout the years.“Craigslist is like the wall-mart online of sex trafficking” said Amber Lyon who was investigating the case and even though she interviewed Craig in person he could not answer most of the questions and decided to walk away from the problem instead. This story will continue this Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.