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Now that more than a hundred children have been freed from sexual slavery, they face extreme challenges.
That’s what counselor Gina Simmons, who has a family practice in California, says typically happens with children who are exploited in transactions where they are the merchandise, often losing their ability to trust others.
The rescue of the children is the result of a weekend FBI sweep, dubbed "Operation Cross Country," which ended July 29. All told, 150 suspected pimps were arrested and 105 children were rounded up from 76 American cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit and Arizona.
The children, all girls, ranged in age from 13 to 17. They were being sold on the Internet and trafficked at locations across the country, including truck stops and casinos, where the sweeps were done. The FBI is calling it the largest bust in the 10 years since it launched the Innocence Lost initiative to fight child prostitution.
Now, the work begins to reintroduce the children to every-day life. And that won’t necessarily be easy, Simmons said.
“Child prostitutes who are removed from that life face many challenges in their recovery. Those who had strong healthy emotional attachments prior to their exploitation, with a short span of time in the prostitution lifestyle, will likely have the best recovery,” she said.
But others, depending on how long they were held captive, “learn to survive by denying their own needs while catering to the sick desires of others,” Simmons said.
Mark Hoffman with the FBI’s Phoenix bureau, told Family.com that child victims held under those circumstances are typically brainwashed. "They pull them away from home,” Hoffman said, “and then at that point (their abductors) basically turn violent and children just can't escape from that.”
Their recovery also depends on other factors, Simmons said: “What life did they have before they became abused? Were they loved and well cared for, or abused and neglected? How long did the prostitution/abuse continue? How severe was the abuse?”
The arrests and rescues, said Ron Hoscko, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division, in a statement, “serves as a reminder that these abhorrent crimes can happen anywhere and that the FBI remains committed to stopping this cycle of victimization and holding the criminals who profit from this exploitation accountable.”
He added, "Child prostitution remains a persistent threat to children across America.”
In the meantime, this latest sweep operation means that since 2003 more than 2,700 victims of underage sexual exploitation, including the latest 105 girls, are free from that life as they learn to trust again.
