Los Angeles County is declaring war on sex buyers.
At tomorrow’s Board of Supervisors meeting, the Board will discuss supporting a package of state legislation that cracks down on those who buy and sell young children for sex.
According to a recent study by the Urban Institute, child sex trafficking is an obscene money maker. Traffickers across the country can make anywhere between $11,000 and $33,000 a week selling young girls. Sadly, the buyers and sellers of this industry are rarely punished for their crimes. Nationally only about 10 percent of all prostitution related arrests were sex buyers. Instead young girls are being arrested rather than those who exploit them.
This “War on Child Sex Trafficking” legislative package will bring longer jail time for sex buyers, add sex trafficking to a list of gang-related felonies, authorize wiretapping in sex trafficking cases, and allow victims to testify against their traffickers in just one courtroom, rather than facing their exploiter in multiple jurisdictions.
These are small, but necessary steps that must be taken to shut off the demand for young children. We must take a stand and collectively say “No more. Not in our streets. Not to our young girls.”