pimps, who are adept at creating a pseudo-family environment by promising money, love and affection to children coming from dysfunctional homes who are seeking care and nourishment. These sexual predators then strip these children of whatever money they make and severely abuse them in order to establish a relationship of dependency.
So where does this leave the thousands of young people forced to sell themselves for sex every day just to survive to see the next day?
There are few cut-and-dried solutions. We can continue to throw money at the government˜with its task forces, sting operations and initiatives˜and comfort ourselves that something is being done. We can continue to give money to our churches and synagogues in the hopes that they will do something, perhaps by focusing on the inner cities and offering counseling and assistance to these cast-off children. We can even contact our representatives and insist that they get tough on crime by showing „no leniency‰ to sexual predators.
However, until each of us gets serious about this crisis, until we all start doing our part to target the underlying societal causes˜poverty, drug abuse and dysfunctional family units˜the gains will continue to be minimal. And tragically, it will be the children who pay the price for our neglect.
WC: 981
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks) will be out in September 2008.
videos
fotos
rss
