How Sex Traffickers Are Deceiving Children in Poverty—Right Under Our Noses
Free For Life Ministries Director Colette Bercu says there are about 27 million people being sold into slavery right now. Young children, especially those in poverty who are falsely promised a good job to help their family, are being lied to and trapped.
“There was a case in the United States here that I can talk about because it was publicized. And this young girl was from Mexico. She was 13 years old,” Bercu says. “And she was approached by somebody who said, ‘There is a job for you in a restaurant. Come and work and be able to send money back to your family that I know they desperately need.’
“Well, when she got here [to the] United States, there was no job. And that very first day, this 13-year-old child was forced to be with 30 men, and that was her existence for the next two years of her life until she was rescued.”
There is no such thing as a “child prostitute,” Bercu says, because the victims are not benefiting from the act. Rather, they are being abused, she says on the Pure Passion podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network.
“I read an article in the newspaper the other day that was like fingernails on a chalkboard to me, and they were saying that the oldest profession is alive and well,” Bercu says. “This is not a profession. Prostitution is not a profession. It is something that is being perpetuated, and people who are broken are being sold. And our young men and young women who are selling people are also trapped in bondage at the same time. …
“We believe that without Christ in this equation, all of the best psychologists in the world will never bring somebody to complete wholeness. But the most successful people who are working with these victims are Christians, and they bring the love of Christ into whatever it is that they do: the compassion of Christ, the wholeness, the identity that Christ would want you to have. And they have had thousands of young women be restored and go on to productive lives, to be great mothers to their children.”
To listen to the entire episode and hear more about Bercu’s ministry and how to help, click here.
