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Nov/Dec 2005

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There is nothing sensational about Sonya’s story. She was not kidnapped from a rural Burmese village and trafficked to a Thai sex ring. She was not an Eastern European virgin lured to America under false pretenses of beginning a lucrative dancing career. She was not one of the underage Mexican sex slaves the New York Times documented in its now famous January 2004 magazine cover story, “The Girls Next Door.”

When she was 12 years old and due to start middle school, Sonya became invisible. Her father abandoned her family; her older sister was on drugs; her teachers barely knew her; and her mother, whom Sonya describes as both “overprotective” and “workaholic,” was partial to a parenting technique defined by yelling and screaming.

Sonya ran away from home. She hopped on a city bus and was immediately spotted by Jenny, an older woman, who promised her a job and the mothering she so desperately craved. Jenny plied Sonya with drugs and also introduced her to her first pimp. A seasoned professional, this man showered Sonya with gifts and attention before forcing prostitution on her. For the next seven years, Sonya was shuttled across nine state lines and traded to a number of different pimps who controlled her mind, body and finances.

How and why is sexual exploitation a risk for children in the United States as well as abroad? Find out and learn what programs are available to help children at-risk and what you can do to fight the sexual exploitation of children.

Megan Quitkin works for the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS. A journalist who has written for numerous publications, she recently received her Master of Public Health degree from Columbia University.

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PW Connections

Global Exchange participant Loretta Bradley
visits schoolchildren in Cambodia.

• The 1996 PW Global Exchange took a group of Presbyterian Women to Southeast Asia to learn more about “the million-plus children who are abused through tourism and commercialized sexual abuses.”
• Carol Smolenski, a founding member of ECPAT-USA and coordinator since 1996, led a workshop at the 2003 Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women, teaching participants about child exploitation, the size of the problem, international efforts to end it and what Americans can and should do.
• The Justice and Peace Committee of the Churchwide Coordinating Team of Presbyterian Women (CCT/PW) lists child prostitution and child pornography as an ongoing concern for their committee. To learn more about the work of this committee, visit www.pcusa.org/pw/peace-justice.htm.

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