Two weeks ago, World of Children Award Honoree Nick Kristof, OpEd columnist at The New York Times, blew the whistle on a website called backpoage.com, which according to the details in his article, has trafficked some 100,000 children (mostly girls) into the sex trade. This all took place in the USA, not some Third World country right here in our backyard.
Sadly, the news about backpage.com is not new. In 2012 ABC News in Phoenix reported 51 arrests as a result of a police action against this web site and in 2013, NBC News also ran an expose on backpage.
So here are the questions: why have we heard so little about this? Why has the Federal Government not shut down this heinous operation?
To me the answer is simple. We are hypocritical when it comes to trafficking in the USA. We scream bloody murder when it occurs abroad but when it is here at home, well let's just sweep it under the rug and act like it does not exist.
This morning's news headlines included another brutal, senseless beheading by the thugs of ISIS, some possible scandal about political misuse of Twitter and a DEA investigation of NFL team doctors...but what about the 100,000 children being trafficked through backpage.com?
Silence, not a word.
More headlines covered a fall by the rock star Bono, a planned visit by the Pope to the US a full year from now and tennis star Roger Federer quitting a match due to injury...but what about the 100,000 young children whose lives have been destroyed through the backpage.com vehicle?
Silence, not a word.
These children -- mostly girls, many as young as 13, 14, 15 -- are forgotten, left to their fate while we ponder an injury to Bono or what the DEA found in NFL locker rooms.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "What lies before us and what lies behind us are but small matters compared to what lies within us."
What does lie within us? Where is our sense of right and wrong? Where is our sense of values? Where is our outrage?
What lies within us?
We must become the voices for these children. So I ask everyone who sees this to express their outrage, to share this with every person they know and let's become a virtual "mob" demanding justice in our own country for these defenseless children. Let's let every news outlet and every legislator and every peace officer in the nation know that we are watching and waiting for them to take action.
This abuse of our children MUST be stopped and sooner rather than later.
What lies within us?