Imagine what it must be like to live a life where your own voice, actions, and opinions were not in your control. You're constantly sold from place to place as if you were someone else's' property, and your body is both physically and emotionally exploited for the sake of a stranger's desires. It's hard to believe something so cruel and outdated as this could happen in this society today, but the truth is seen through the lives of 2 million adolescents all over the world: modern-day slavery is still alive. There is an unrevealed dark side to our nation that many are not aware of, and it lies beneath the 32 billion dollar industry of sex trafficking-- the combination of corrupt, illegal, criminal organizations that profit and thrive off the dehumanization of millions every year.
As privileged Americans, many of us are unaware of the alarming number of individuals that are currently being smuggled from their homes and taken from their families as we live in ignorant bliss. We like to believe that "The Peculiar Institution" of slavery has been buried deep within our history's past; however, there is still a false conviction commonly shared among us that exemplifies slavery as a mere societal phenomenon that is no longer present in America. Using the evidence inscribed in our history textbooks and documents, we claim that slavery has been abolished from our society. Even the 13th Amendment, which was passed in 1865 after the Civil War, states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except in the punishment for a crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction" ("13th Amendment"). A majority of people believe that we are capable of learning from our mistakes by observing history, and then using those mistakes as lessons for the future. But as a matter of fact, history does repeat itself because we tend to never correct our faults and fatal flaws.
