Today Shared Hope International released State Report Cards for each state in the nation to evaluate its legislative response to domestic minor sex trafficking. Georgia ranked near the top with a ‘C’. View the report here: ReportCards_GA-12.1.11 and find out how you can take action to influence your legislator. Also check out coverage by JJIE

Recognizing that men create demand for prostituted children and that better men have to end the demand… a group called Defenders USA invite other men to take a pledge to do their part.

“We’re going to find ourselves with our feet to the fire” said JJF’s Kaffie McCullough, speaking on the Shared Hope national panel today about the problem of demand.

Kaffie McCullough, A Future. Not A Past. discusses sex trafficking on Protected Innocence Panel

“If we do not start going after the buyers, we will be committing ourselves as a nation to always having victims we have to rescue. We have to start arresting the buyers. They are different from the traffickers.

“Our demand study showed in Georgia alone 7200 men a month, knowingly or unknowingly, buy sex from an adolescent girl. That number was just staggering, and it began to change the conversation when we realized that most of the calls in the study came from suburban, middle class and upper middle class Caucasian males.

“As a nation, if we are going to get serious about stopping this crime, we’re going to find ourselves with our feet to the fire, because if we’re going to arrest the buyers, we’re going to find people who are very important people in one way or another, and it will severely test us as to whether we really do want to stop this crime or not.

“I commend Shared Hope for emphasizing that buyers suffer the right amount of penalties. We noticed in our studies that the men who were calling in [to make a purchase] had absolutely no fear they were going to be brought to justice. Listening to some of the tapes would turn your stomach.

“We must not fail to realize that the fuel for this problem is not the runaway child, is not the throw-away child, is not the young person out there on the street. The fuel for this problem is within our midst all the time.

“The framework of the law is the first step, but I believe we have another very large step, a hurdle, because we have a cultural acceptance of the buying in this country. We do have to start at the top, as Drew mentioned, but we also have to address it from the bottom up. We have to start asking ‘How is it that we’re raising our boys that it’s ok to buy sex when they become a man?’

“There are many ways this is embedded in our culture that we probably aren’t even aware of. Part of the awareness and solutions will come with the laws; the rest of it will come with our resolve. From there, as we follow through with the laws, we will let buyers know we are serious about stopping this, and serious about supporting our children by providing all the other pieces of this initiative that we need.”

Martha Turner is the Communications Officer for
the Juvenile Justice Fund