Underage Sex Trafficking Not as Popular as Ashton Kutcher Wants You to Believe

By James King Wed., Jun. 29 2011 at 4:35 PM

Categories: Sex

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Ashton Kutcher's trying to Punk the world into thinking up to 300,000 underage kids become prostitutes every year.

If you're buying into Ashton Kutcher's media blitz about underage sex trafficking, and think 100,000 to 300,000 children in America become prostitutes every year, you've been Punk'd.

Kutcher's stats are way off -- which he'd know if he did a little research before taking up a cause and blindly throwing around a number based on a rough estimation of how many kids are at risk for prostitution.

Village Voice Media actually researched the subject, and while underage sex trafficking is certainly a problem, it's not nearly as dire as Kutcher would have you believe.

VVM staffers spent two months investigating arrests for juvenile prostitution in the nation's 37 largest cities during a 10-year period, and they found records for only 8,263 arrests across America. This doesn't mean other child prostitutes aren't slipping through the cracks, but 8,263 over a decade is a far cry from 300,000 per year.

Read more in the Village Voice's investigation into underage sex trafficking.

Tags:

arizona, ashton kutcher, underage sex trafficking, village voice media

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Ckvazquez

1 Like

This is so sad....someone out there is trying to bring some awareness on Human Trafficking and all the victims we have in the US....and this writer is trying to attack him. At least he is trying to give these victims a voice. I work on the raids in Phoenix, and already in this current year, we have rescued 625 victims and the year is not over with.

IBN8

That still doesn't make it ok to make up facts even if it's for a good cause. More people will be engaged if the numbers are actually something that comes with a way to cite the information. Fact checking is the first step in cognitive thinking, we need more people to pay attention and call it as the facts see it.

nkiflemar

@IBN8 Well, the facts the author has here are way off as well, so where is his data coming from? There have been over 600 underage girls rescued in Phoenix alone thus far this year and he says there are only about 8,000??? There are estimates of 2 million worldwide. Those estimates are based on averages per major metropolitan areas and they take into consideration a lot of different things based on research done with former trafficking victims, traffickers who are incarcerated. There is no way to have exact facts, but these are not just random numbers, they are estimated to be pretty accurate. Arrests are not the indication of how many are out there, just like 11 million is not an exact number of undocumented people in the US, based on arrests made! Trafficking victims are not just the girls out walking the street. There are some that never leave the confines of their hotel or apartment, because most of it is done over the internet or on Craigslist ads, etc. Girls no longer walk the streets and are found in danceclubs or online. Ashton Kutcher is trying to bring attention to a problem than is MUCH larger than this author presumes and if he is over on his estimate, which I doubt, he is still much closer to the real numbers than the author, by far!

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Walter Concrete

That's some great investigative work, James. The PNT lifts the statistics of what someone else wrote which were taken from a 2 month investigation spread out over 10 years. Basing this on underage prostitutes who were arrested. What does that prove? Absolutely nothing. How about the number of missing children per year in the U.S. and then from the rest of the world? How about India? Have any idea howmany children go missing every year from that country? Kuchner and the PNT please the PTB that control their strings. Quarreling between yourselves is more distraction and misdirection. Actually it's a one sided quarrel. He doesn't know you exist.

James King

You realize Phoenix New Times is owned by Village Voice Media -- the news outlet that conducted the investigation -- right? I'm not passing off someone's "investigative work" off as my own. I'm acknowledging the work of my colleagues. I've crunched the numbers, and your incessant bitching aside, you're probably good for about 100 web hits a week. Thanks for reading!