The Link Between Orphans and Sex Trafficking
Filed under: Adoption, Featured, Human Trafficking, Justice
In preparation for my missions trip to Thailand as well as in this journey of adoption that God is taking us on, I have been doing research on orphans and human trafficking. I have been reading a book called “The Natashas” which has really opened my eyes up to the atrocities that are going on around the world as well as in our backyard.
One of the most appalling things that I have come across in my journey so far is the targeting of orphans for sex-slavery. In March 2003 the U.S. State Department reported a “pattern of trafficking” involving orphans in Russia. According to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the girls at risk are those who “must leave orphanages when they graduate,” usually at sixteen or seventeen.
According to data from the Health and Social Development Ministry, more than 730,000 children in Russia either have no parents or have been abandoned by their parents. Of this number about 200,000 of them live in orphanages and internats.
More than 160,000 children are waiting to be adopted according to the state database. International adoptions have been hampered by recent legislation. As of March 2007, only 20 organizations had received accreditation from the government to oversee international adoptions. In 2007, 9,000 Russian children were adopted by foreign families. More than 4,000 of these went to the United States.
Statistics sited from the article “Russian Orphans” By Svetlana Osadchuk in the May 19, 2008 edition of the Moscow Times.
The horrifying thing is that traffickers often know precisely when these girls are to be turned out of the institutions (“some orphanage directors sold information… to traffickers”) and are waiting for them, job offers in hand. The State Department also notes that throughout Russia, there are “reports of children being kidnapped or purchased from . . . orphanages for sexual abuse and child pornography” and that child prostitution is “widespread” in orphanages in Ukraine. And in Romania, “many orphanages are complicit in letting girls fall victim to trafficking networks.”
What if Christians began adopting at-risk children from countries where they were being targeted?
Tags: adoption, Human Trafficking, Justice, Modern Day Slavery, Orphanages, orphans
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