PRESS RELEASE
August 1, 2010
For Immediate Release
Educational Webinars Cover Human Trafficking for Trucking and Travel Plaza Industry Members
Human trafficking is a $32-billion-a-year business, destroying countless lives and enslaving its victims, the majority of whom are women and children. Most Americans are aware of the problem in Asia and Africa, but are oblivious to that fact that it is big business here in the United States.
To a great extent, domestic sex trafficking is occurring along our nation’s highways and at its truck stops. Human traffickers target truckers, because of their transient nature, at truck stops, rest areas and restaurants as consumers of the children and women they sell. Pimps have also been known to recruit truck drivers to transport girls over state lines, removing some of the risk from their shoulders and placing it on those of the trucker and his/her company.
While the average age for a young girl to enter the sex-for-sale industry in the United States is 12, many of them are forced to lie about their age, pretend they enjoy what they do and present a much older image of themselves. National statistics puts the annual number of American children and teens trafficked at approximately 300,000. That doesn’t count the additional 17,000 internationals trafficked into our country each year for forced sex and labor.
Because members of the trucking and travel plaza industry represent the eyes and ears of America on those highways, they can play a critical part in fighting this crime and those who perpetrate it. They simply need to know what to look for, what questions to ask and what steps to take.
Transport For Christ (www.transportforchrist.com) is partnering with a Chapter 61 Ministries (www.chapter61.com) initiative, Truckers Against Trafficking (www.truckersagainsttrafficking.com), to help educate the trucking and travel plaza industries, as well as the general public, about the truth surrounding human trafficking in America and steps they can take to fight it.
Transport For Christ will host informational webinars presented by Chapter 61 Ministries on September 1, 2, 7, 15, 16 and 23 at 9 p.m. EDT.
If you would like to attend one of these webinars, please send your name and the exact email address for us to mail the invitation (this will be the address you use for the webinar). For more information, please contact Scott Weidner, President and CEO of Transport for Christ at (717) 426-9977.
Send Request to: tfcio@transportforchrist.org
Please title request “Trafficking webinar”
