We live among monsters.


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My heart is so heavy.

We had a meeting at work today with a group of women who run an underground organization to rehabilitate girls who were victims of trafficking. 

Many are sold by their own families. Most by their "boyfriends". The great majority come from broken homes (I don't mean divorce, I mean families that shouldn't be raising children at all) and addicts. 

This isn't Manila or Bangkok or anywhere else across the ocean.... this is in our small town. There are FOUR safehouses here She told us chilling stories of things that have happened right under our noses. The problem is massive and growing, but no one wants to believe it exists. 

She also treats kids as young as 8 who are addicted to pornography. 

What this tells me is that there are people who are walking among us every day who are willing to buy and sell children for sefish and horrific purposes, and others who are deliberately exposing (and exploiting) children to porn . People we see at the store and in our neighborhoods and at our schools and probably even at church. 

How am I supposed to safely raise children in a world like this?

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I'd heard of this in the US but did not know that many were sold by their families themselves.  I had seen several documentaries on it dealing with what appeared to be many children of minorities (in the US), with some of them also being kidnap victims, or runaways, as well as those who were introduced as a way to make money by friends and fell into a trap they could not get out of. 

In a similar note, there IS human trafficking in the US.  I've seen a few in the US that got hit by stings (which was a good thing).  All of them thus far that I've seen personally (well, read about when it happened in a city or area I happened to be in at the time) seemed to be Asian massage parlors where they had promised woman from the Orient good jobs in the US and then basically kidnapped them once they got here by taking any way they had to return home, and/or other means to escape.  I've seen it enough that whenever I see an ad or sign along the highway for an Asian massage parlor, I wonder if that place is also engaged in human trafficking.

I've volunteered at an abused woman's shelter before, it wasn't an underground organization though (why would such an organization be underground, their are legitimate US resources available to help those in these situations and unless the cops are corrupt, they normally also have safe houses and such to also aid in these problems) as help as well as I suppose to help safe guard the place (there were also police visits and drive by surveillance on a very regular basis to also try to keep up security).  I must admit though, even with everything we did to try to keep the ladies safe there, incidents of a horrible nature still occurred occasionally.

For your children, warn them about the dangers, tell them not to talk to strangers, tell them to be wary of others, and all other things you can to try to ensure that they are as safe as they can be, even when you are not around.

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Guest MormonGator

I think it's important not to get paranoid or overly dejected. The majority of people don't engage in human trafficking. The majority of people aren't obsessed with and addicted to porn. So like with every problem, it's important to take a deep breath, look at objective  facts then address it. 

in college once a professor said that "a different woman is abused every four minutes." A girl in the class said "Wrong, in a few years we'd run out of women. Every single women would have been abused at that point."

Even people with good intentions might be wrong. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronald-weitzer/human-trafficking-myths_b_935366.html

Edited by MormonGator
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Guest LiterateParakeet
1 hour ago, Eowyn said:

How am I supposed to safely raise children in a world like this?

I understand and have often contemplated the same (or similar) question.  I don't know if this will help you but here it is just in case.

First, allow yourself to feel what you feel.  If this didn't bother you, that would concern me.  It's normal and natural.  Remember when Enoch was given a vision of the world, and he saw the Lord weep?  Even the Lord weeps at this horror.

Second, remember that Christ suffered for the sins of all this sin and the pain it causes.  He is uniquely qualified to comfort them and HEAL them, and He will.  As horrible as things can sometimes be here in this world, I have to trust that the Lord will heal people so that even those who suffered the most will still be glad they had the opportunity to experience life and get a body.

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At work we generally say that 10% of the population is the problem.  That probably is reasonably accurate.  That means the other 90% are not the problem.  Yes there are monsters, but you most likely will never deal with them or even be exposed to them.  Live cautiously, but not with paranoia.

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Guest MormonGator
2 minutes ago, mirkwood said:

At work we generally say that 10% of the population is the problem.  That probably is reasonably accurate.  That means the other 90% are not the problem.  Yes there are monsters, but you most likely will never deal with them or even be exposed to them.  Live cautiously, but not with paranoia.

So well said. 

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3 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

 

For your children, warn them about the dangers, tell them not to talk to strangers, tell them to be wary of others, and all other things you can to try to ensure that they are as safe as they can be, even when you are not around.

I actually disagree with this. We have to strengthen not just family but community. "Don't talk to strangers" is obsolete advice that never should have been given in the first place, according to safety experts. Wariness skills are good, as is not going off with strangers, but undo paranoia against others when we should be building community is, and I believe this strongly, part of Satan's plan.

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58 minutes ago, Backroads said:

I actually disagree with this. We have to strengthen not just family but community. "Don't talk to strangers" is obsolete advice that never should have been given in the first place, according to safety experts. Wariness skills are good, as is not going off with strangers, but undo paranoia against others when we should be building community is, and I believe this strongly, part of Satan's plan.

The "stranger danger" phenomena is a definitely a problem, when most violence is committed in a interpersonal relationship rather than by a stranger you've never met. But the problem of human trafficking extends to both realms. We see the interpersonal trafficking that Eowyn described, and then there are places like Vegas and other major cities where girls are approached by random women in malls or parks and seduce them into trafficking. They are almost always girls who are runaways, so it's a different population, but it is still this idea of a "stranger" beginning the process. As mirkwood stated, I think it's best to teach them to be cautious and careful, but not paranoid about strangers. 

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15 hours ago, Eowyn said:

My heart is so heavy.

We had a meeting at work today with a group of women who run an underground organization to rehabilitate girls who were victims of trafficking. 

Oh Eowyn.  On one hand, I want to say "welcome to the club - the whole world needs to know what you just learned".  On the other hand, I remember my reaction a few years back when I learned that slavery was alive and well in the world, and I probably went through every single day never being more than 10 miles away from a slave.  I had the same reaction as yours.  

Take heart and find courage.  Continue to learn, even though it hurts.  Embrace this new perspective, because it is more accurate, honest, and relevant.  Good is still good, and as Mirk pointed out, the majority of people are still good.  The solutions are the same they've always been, and you already know them: Spread the gospel, strengthen the family, help the poor.  

Here - have some more reading material.  Everyone should read this. 

http://www.5280.com/girlsnextdoor/

 

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Oh - and the answer to your question about raising children, is one you already know too.  Love them, give them a home, a refuge from the world.  Teach them in age-appropriate ways about the dangers of the world.  Prepare them to remain part of the 90% good. 

 

(And getting them in to some decent and practical martial arts isn't a bad idea either.  I prefer Krav Maga, but there are many others.)

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16 hours ago, MormonGator said:

in college once a professor said that "a different woman is abused every four minutes." A girl in the class said "Wrong, in a few years we'd run out of women. Every single women would have been abused at that point."

I just did the math on that.  It would take 38,000 years to "run out of women".  So, the student was incorrect.  And to be technical, this doesn't take into account births and deaths. 

On a more positive note (if we take that statistic to be true) that means that 0.2% of women will be abused.  That still amounts to over 9 million individuals.  I don't know if the small percentage should allow us to be complacent enough to accept the 9 Million statistic as "it's not that bad".

From Gator's link, the government estimates on trafficking (only a small subset of those who are abused) offers only 800,000 individuals.  Better. But still very very bad.

 

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2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

Oh - and the answer to your question about raising children, is one you already know too.  Love them, give them a home, a refuge from the world.  Teach them in age-appropriate ways about the dangers of the world.  Prepare them to remain part of the 90% good. 

Good advice.  I imagine these "boyfriends", and other truly wicked people (e.g., those with a propensity for wife beating, sociopaths, etc.) can't consistently hide who they really are in most cases.  I imagine there will often be warning signs, such as being controlling, isolated instances of physical abuse, manipulation, and the like.  We need to teach our children to recognize and be on the lookout for any such signs and, if they are dating or otherwise associating with someone exhibiting such signs, to run for the hills.

I remember back in 2001, for my senior prom, I went to pick up my date.  It was our first date, and her family did not really know me at all.  I went up to the door, and her father was sitting on a rocking chair on their front porch, cleaning and polishing his shotgun!  It wasn't like I was planning any trouble, being a good Mormon and all, but the message got across!  I think something can be said for being at least fairly involved in our childrens' social lives, and keeping up with who they are associating with, as a matter of safety.  

Edited by DoctorLemon
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3 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

I just did the math on that.  It would take 38,000 years to "run out of women".  So, the student was incorrect.  And to be technical, this doesn't take into account births and deaths.

Depends on whether the professor meant "on the planet" or "in our city". If the latter, he was probably wrong; that would be over 130,000 new victims per year, which seems high even for a large city. If he meant the world, then he is almost certainly far shy of the actual number. Three times that many people are murdered per year.

Probably more importantly, what did he mean by "abuse"? If you slap you wife, is that abuse? Most of us in this forum would say yes. If you slap something out of your wife's hand in frustration, is that abuse? Is it abusive if you push her? What if you push her in response to her pushing you? What if you say something really nasty to her? What if you say something unkind to her, but not really nasty? What if you loudly voice your frustration to her because of something she did? What if it's not because of her and not specifically pointed at her, but just you voicing your frustration?

Clearly there is no bright-line standard for "abuse". Thus the term becomes a catch-all, and is used to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean. And thus we have another near-useless, politically loaded term.

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37 minutes ago, DoctorLemon said:

I imagine these "boyfriends", and other truly wicked people (e.g., those with a propensity for wife beating, sociopaths, etc.) can't consistently hide who they really are in most cases.  I imagine there will often be warning signs, such as being controlling, isolated instances of physical abuse, manipulation, and the like.  We need to teach our children to recognize and be on the lookout for any such signs and, if they are dating or otherwise associating with someone exhibiting such signs, to run for the hills.

Well, who they "really are" is businessmen.  They just deal in human flesh instead of other products, and they don't think too hard about morality.  They take care of their product in order to preserve it's value to them.  Sound evil?  Good - that means your light of Christ is working.   But yeah, if you've ever had that one horrible boss when you were a teenager who used all those nasty manipulative mind tricks on you to get you to work off the clock, then you've met these guys, just on a less evil level.  

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17 minutes ago, DoctorLemon said:

The statistic I heard was 1 out of 4 women will be sexually abused at some point in their lives.

Vort's comments about the ambiguous definition of abuse can sometimes apply to this statistic as well. What kind of sexual abuse? If it is specifically rape, I think the statistic is closer to 1 out of 6, but more broadly, sexual abuse is probably close to that statistic, and I believe it is just as close to 1 out of 4 for men as well with the broader definition of sexual abuse. You just get less reports of it for a variety of reasons. 

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Guest MormonGator
1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

I just did the math on that.  It would take 38,000 years to "run out of women".  So, the student was incorrect.  And to be technical, this doesn't take into account births and deaths. 

On a more positive note (if we take that statistic to be true) that means that 0.2% of women will be abused.  That still amounts to over 9 million individuals.  I don't know if the small percentage should allow us to be complacent enough to accept the 9 Million statistic as "it's not that bad".

From Gator's link, the government estimates on trafficking (only a small subset of those who are abused) offers only 800,000 individuals.  Better. But still very very bad.

 

And, to be fair to the student and the teacher-she might have given different numbers and my senile and feeble mind might not have remembered them. 

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10 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

And, to be fair to the student and the teacher-she might have given different numbers and my senile and feeble mind might not have remembered them. 

It's probably just another example of yet another lousy teacher missing yet another opportunity to, you know, teach. Consider the following conversation that didn't take place:

Professor: A different woman is abused every four seconds.

Sweet Young Thing: Professor, that must be wrong. If it were true, then in a few years we'd run out of women. Every single women would have been abused at that point.

Professor: Ms. Thing has brought up a great point: Is it even possible that women are being abused at such a rate?

Let's do a little bit of simple math. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, so if a different woman were abused every four seconds, that would mean that 86,400/4 = 21,600 different, previously unabused women were abused every day. With 365 days in a year, that means that 21,600 x 365 = 7,884,000 women are being newly abused every year. Over a span of a 70-year lifetime, that would imply that 7,884,000 x 70 = 551,880,000 women out of the world population are abused during their lifetime. Now, there are roughly seven billion people on the earth, about half of whom are women. That's 3.5 billion women, about half a billion of whom -- according to our figures -- will be abused during their lifetimes. So that's one in seven.

What do you think? Is Ms. Thing's point well-taken, and the number is simply outrageous? Or is it reasonable to believe that one in seven women are abused during their lifetimes? Some sources suggest that the real figure is actually much higher than one in seven.

Now, another thing to consider is what we mean by "abuse"...

But to expect such reasoned conversation in our schools, even our colleges, is apparently too much to hope for. Parents, teach your children well.

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Guest MormonGator
13 minutes ago, Vort said:

It's probably just another example of yet another lousy teacher missing yet another opportunity to, you know, teach. Consider the following conversation that didn't take place:

 

It's an example of many things. We (generic usage) don't want to be skeptical of people who we think have good intentions, so we'll just shut up and believe them. This goes for culture, religion, politics, everything. 

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57 minutes ago, Vort said:

Sweet Young Thing: Professor, that must be wrong. If it were true, then in a few years we'd run out of women. Every single women would have been abused at that point.

Great - another acronym to remember.  We need more SYTs out there. 

Edited by NeuroTypical
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Well, I teach my kids not to talk to strangers, but that's with good reason.

Just recently, with our local kids, that paid off in a BIG way.  We had strangers try to kidnap some elementary children for who knows what.  They screamed, they struggled, they ran.  We found the people and got them arrested (and it was people, not just person).

I suppose it depends on where one lives, but I don't see why one would teach their kids to talk to strangers, especially with all the evil that goes on in the world today.

Abuse does occur with parents, but then children shouldn't go talking to strangers about it unless that individual just happens to also be a police officer.  Instead they should turn to teachers, others, and individuals that they know that might be able to do something about it.

It may be paranoia, but do a search sometime to see how many predators are around the area you live.  It makes one think twice about the entire strangers thing when one sees it in many areas. 

We can still build community by increasing those we know, by building it in church, and being neighborly.  I don't see a conflict between building your community up, but making sure that your children don't talk to strangers who you, nor they, know what their real intent is.

Edited by JohnsonJones
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2 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

Well, I teach my kids not to talk to strangers, but that's with good reason.

Just recently, with our local kids, that paid off in a BIG way.  We had strangers try to kidnap some elementary children for who knows what.  They screamed, they struggled, they ran.  We found the people and got them arrested (and it was people, not just person).

I suppose it depends on where one lives, but I don't see why one would teach their kids to talk to strangers, especially with all the evil that goes on in the world today.

Abuse does occur with parents, but then children shouldn't go talking to strangers about it unless that individual just happens to also be a police officer.  Instead they should turn to teachers, others, and individuals that they know that might be able to do something about it.

It may be paranoia, but do a search sometime to see how many predators are around the area you live.  It makes one think twice about the entire strangers thing when one sees it in many areas. 

We can still build community by increasing those we know, by building it in church, and being neighborly.  I don't see a conflict between building your community up, but making sure that your children don't talk to strangers who you, nor they, know what their real intent is.

 

And how many kids are unable to get out of danger because they were told to never to talk to a stranger, who is statistically a decent person?

The fact is, kids need to learn how to talk to strangers. It's a necessary survival skill, whether in mundane life or real danger.

 

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39 minutes ago, Backroads said:

 

And how many kids are unable to get out of danger because they were told to never to talk to a stranger, who is statistically a decent person?

The fact is, kids need to learn how to talk to strangers. It's a necessary survival skill, whether in mundane life or real danger.

 

My opinion is probably somewhere between your position and the position of JohnsonJones.

On one hand, I came from a family where my mother really stressed not talking with strangers.  Every time there was a local child abduction, my mother would let us know about it.  I remember once, when I was 9 years old, I was playing in my front yard and an old man asked me from across the street, "What time is it!"  I ran into the house, just like I was taught to do, without giving him an answer.  This attitude kept me safe on one hand, but on the other hand I still have a certain strong distrust and even hostility towards strangers that I was never able to shake, even into adulthood.  I feel it even towards new people in the ward I don't know yet, particularly men.  And yes, sometimes it translates to being very cold towards strangers (although I am really very nice once you get to know me).

On the other hand, the other day I was on a walk with my four-year old daughter.  A little boy, who couldn't have been older than five years old, decided to follow us for three blocks and try and talk with my daughter.  I was shocked and unsure what to do.  This little boy was way too young to be blocks away from home!  Where were his parents?  I feel like he was in some danger of being abducted, or hit by a car, or who knows what else.  I would have felt better if he had been nine or ten years old, but a five year old?  (Eventually my daughter and I looped back around towards our house, and the boy went back to where he was when we ran into him).

So I don't know.  Maybe the answer is somewhere in between?

Edited by DoctorLemon
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