Quotes

"Approximately 600,000 to 800,000 victims are trafficked across international borders annually, and between 14,500 and 17,500 of those victims are trafficked into the United States each year. More than half of these victims worldwide are children!"

Child Victims of Human Trafficking, Department of Health and Human Services, USA and the U.S. Department of State

"The Phoenix Vice Squad Department spends as much as 40 percent of its work combating juvenile prostitution. The City of Phoenix has been dealing with this problem unsuccessfully for a long time and is now asking for help from the State to help address this problem."

Vice Officer, Phoenix Police Department

"Domestic child prostitution is often not the beginning of the exploitation of the child, but a continuation of abuse or trauma that the victims have already endured. Traffickers take advantage of runaway children who have often fled their homes to escape physical or sexual abuse. They're throwaways."

US Attorney General

"These predators are particularly adept at reading children, at reading kids, and knowing what their vulnerabilities are...these predators are going where the kids are. What you can see, time and time again, is that the predators will adapt their means to whatever the young people are doing - whether it's malls, whether it's ski slopes, whether it's beaches,"

FBI Deputy Assistant Director, Chip Burrus, who started the Lost Innocence project, which specializes in child and teen-sex trafficking

"Predators ... are going to do everything in their power to try to convince young girls, young boys, to come with them and enter this particular lifestyle."

ABC News: "Teen Girls' Stories of Sex Trafficking in the U.S., February 6, 2006

"...minors are, for the most part, brainwashed and terrorized into child prostitution. There are 60 pimps and over 50 child prostitutes that have been identified in the City of Phoenix."

Lucia Howard, Chairman, Ad Hoc Task Force on Child Prostitution

"...approximately 50 youth have been located who have been trafficked into sexual exploitation. Most of the girls are scared. They have been kidnapped, held hostage and forced into prostitution. They are in mental cages; the pimps have control over their mind, their spirit and their soul, and getting out of the business is extremely difficult."