I was recently able to watch a special CNN report entitled “Selling the Girl Next Door.” Amber Lyon reported on the growing crime of sex trafficking. She chose to interview the victims, relatives of victims, people paying money for sex (Johns), the owner of a house where prostitution takes place (brothel) and went undercover as a young victim of sex trafficking. By covering all sides of the story, Lyon effectively showed the public view of “prostitutes” and showed the girls behind all the make up and short skirts.

Lyon talked with a john who was given the opportunity to attend John school where he would learn the truth about the person he savagely chose to degrade and demean.

The teacher of the class was Antoinette Welch, Assistant District Attorney in Tennessee. She was originally an undercover cop who participated in undercover busts for prostitution. She was the fake prostitute. When asked about what type of men attend the session she gave this response: “They are everybody; rich, poor, medium income, every ethnicity. They are married, single, or divorced. It is the most diverse crowd I have ever seen for any type of crime there is.”

The John was quick to accuse websites such as Craigslist or Backpage. He took little responsibility for his action and will most likely continue to buy people for sex. When Lyon confronted this man on the problem he reduced to mumbling answers.

“I feel like I have an addiction. I think [prostitution] is an escape and there is no strings attached,” he said.

This man was a normal 50-year-old business man who just so happens to have a family at home, and he chooses to continue to defile young women. He is old enough to be their father! This perpetrator plead guilty to buying sex from a woman but denied the fact that he was feeling up a minor.

The disappointing thing about the justice system is that Johns can claim that the victim never told them she was a minor. Then, the perpetrator is allowed to go to a day long class while the victim is locked in a juvenile detention center for something that technically she cannot even give consent to because she is a minor.

According to this John, he would be able to have sex with a person in a matter of 30 minutes. Technically, he could get a girl as quick as he gets a pizza. Taking this into consideration one must think how many girls are being sold every minute. Since time is no longer a restraint, one can now have sex whenever one wants. Like the John said, there are no strings attached, so it is a simple business transaction. This is made possible thanks to advertising websites such as Craigslist or Backpage. Pimps have greatly taken advantage of this nearly free ad space to sell their product and reduce their chances of getting caught.

“Backpage normalizes [prostitution] ‘cause you go on, you buy furniture, you find a job and you buy a girl,” Lyon said.

Since the latest decision made by Craigslist to shut down its adult section, the pimps have migrated to Backpage. This is shown through Backpage’s extreme increase in profit. After all, it is not every day that a company’s advertisements increases by one million dollars. Pimps can easily work around the site’s simple guidelines. The pimp refrains from nude pictures and fudges on the girl’s age by saying she is 18, when in reality she is only 13. It is said that the pimp makes somewhere from 150 thousand to 500 thousand dollars a year off of these women and girls.

When the owner of Craigslist was confronted about the site’s adult section, he had no rebuttal to the argument. This shows how out of control sex trafficking really is. When one is on the Internet he can be whoever he want to be. There is an extreme lack of discipline in the world because the criminal could be anyone, anywhere. It it already seen that by shutting down the adult advertisement on one site is not going to stop the pimps. They will only move to another site.

People need to stop fighting with all of their “big people words” and choose to fight through their actions. Men choose to fight like a man and stop manipulating young and old women.