Does this make you uncomfortable?

I've been watching quotes from Traffic Jam on Facebook this week.  They make me uncomfortable.  I also had a conversation recently with a sex trafficking survivor who told me of a website about trafficking whose title made me uncomfortable.  I've been tossing this blog post around for a while.  I never want to post things for the "shock" value.  My desire is not to turn people away from the plight of victims.  Nor is it to sensationalize a horrible crime. 

At the same time, in my recent conversation - she had a valid point.  She was talking about this website she saw (one I will not put on here, but will explain in a moment) and she said the creator of the website was intentionally trying to make people uncomfortable.  Why?  Because being a victim of sex trafficking is not comfortable - and glossing it over with mild words does not help people to truly grasp the reality of sex trafficking.

The website uses a very graphic term to discuss what, literally, happens to sex trafficking victims.  To children.  When I first heard it, I was appalled.  Then I heard the reasoning behind it.  Although I would never use those terms because - quite honestly - it's too much for me - it is definitely a way to make people realize, in very graphic terms, the reality of what is happening to children as young as 6, if not younger.  Hearing it drives the point home - and to a victim, myself being a sexual-abuse victim, it definitely makes me feel like throwing up.  Which is the whole point - that people would grasp how a victim feels.  Grasp it enough to do something about it.

Anyway - back to the quotes I've been seeing on Facebook.  I'm going to list them here - they are not like the website, so don't worry - but they will make you think.  It is, my friends, a reality - and one we must do something to stop.  Again, these came from the Facebook page of Traffic Jam.

~‎10% of Moldova's population has been trafficked out. Can you imagine the uproar if one in ten Americans were stolen and enslaved?

~RT @trafficjam_org: The Super Bowl - "The greatest show on earth and single largest human trafficking incident in the United States"

~"Child sex rings spike during Super Bowl week" - USA Today

~ ‎"The Super Bowl is a magnet for child sex Traffickers" - ABC News

~ ‎"People are thinking of the Packers and Steelers. Most don't think about a 12 year-old being forced to dance naked" - Texas AG

~ ‎"Pimps hawking young girls see the thousands of men who travel to the Super Bowl each year as a gold mine of potential clients" - AP

~‎"We are expecting thousands of underage domestic minors to be trafficked to the Super Bowl" - Nancy Rivard, Airline Ambassadors

I'll never look at the super bowl in the same way again.

It's easy to say "sex trafficking" - isn't it? Not so easy when you read the quote about the 12 year old above, is it?  I highly encourage you to read some books - there are plenty out there - of accounts of sex trafficking.  It's hard, it hurts and it makes you sick to your stomach.  But it makes it real - and it puts names and faces to the millions of kids out there who need our help.

Does it make you uncomfortable?  Enough to move?  If your interested in getting involved - let me know.