I started doing some research online for hard statistics about prostitution and trafficking here, and what I found is about what I figured...there is no way for them to account for everything and it is much worse than what is documented. Brothel prostitutes are supposed to carry a health card and prove routine health physicals, so those cases are accounted for, but all the others are not. So many births are to girls under the age of 18. It is very common here for girls to become mothers between the ages of 14-16. After reading several articles and research documents, I thought, how can stats show the woman who are forced into prostitution to buy food for their family? How can the stats account for all the girls who are encouraged to work the streets close to bars, so that they won't be evicted from their home? How can it show the women who cross the border into this country illegally looking for any way to survive? It simply cannot.
{This picture was borrowed from here.}
What I did read, unanimously, is that the majority of the customers or consumers for the prostitution industry and human trafficking are North Americans. Costa Rica is an international destination for human sex trafficking and the ringleaders of these criminal organizations are just as powerful as drug cartels. They have property that can be sold again and again which makes them an invaluable asset. These girls are coerced into thinking they will get out of a bad situation, earn money, and will then be able to have a "better" life than they know. Their path and choice is driven by dire need. They are in situations where they have nothing left. They have no tangible goods left to sell. They have nothing left...but themselves. They use everything they have left...just to survive and provide.
Prostitution researchers’ say, ‘women are in legal prostitution for the same reason they are in illegal prostitution, a lack of alternative survival options. Most women in prostitution did not make a choice to enter prostitution from among a range of other options. They did not decide they want to be prostitutes instead of doctors, engineers, lawyers, pilots. Instead their ‘options’ were more in the realm of how to get enough money to feed themselves and their children. If prostitution were really a choice it would not be those people with the fewest choices available to them who are disproportionately in prostitution. Such choices are better termed survival strategies. Prostitution is about not having a range of educational and job options to choose from. Most women in prostitution end up there only because other options are not available.’’
But there is another option available to them. They can have the Lord, if only they knew there was another option. What if they knew the Lord and had the opportunity to know the Gospel and to obey His precious word? The impossible is possible with God {Phil 4:13}. It is possible for them to not have to choose this. No child should have to live the nightmare of traffic, scenes, and sounds in the confines of their own home {shanty, at best}. And every mother and woman {tragically, girls...children} should know that there is another choice out there. She should know she is worth far more. She should know that there really is another choice. If only...
*** I credited links to pictures I borrowed, simply for reasons of copyright. ***
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