A child being sold to illustrate that child sex trafficking is among the most horrific forms of exploitation on Earth. By saiyood/stock.adobe.com
Child sex trafficking is among the most horrific forms of exploitation on Earth. Exact numbers are notoriously difficult to find, as trafficking is almost always a hidden crime, but the International Labor Organization estimated in 2018 that over one million children are being sex trafficked globally.
Those numbers have surged since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020—as of 2022, there was a 31 percent increase in detected child trafficking victims worldwide—and thousands of those victims are in our own backyards.
In the United States, human trafficking was made illegal only twenty-five years ago, when Congress passed the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Since then, efforts to eradicate sex trafficking-–including the child sex trade—have focused mainly on punishing traffickers, while those buying exploited individuals for sex often face few consequences for their actions.
To address this problem, lawmakers in California have been trying to crack down on people buying children for sex over the last year. However, recent wrangling over a bill making solicitation of 16- and 17-year-olds for sex a felony reveals that the United States still has a long way to go in eradicating the child sex trade.
Assembly Bill 379 and demand-side trafficking laws
Until last year, any solicitation of a minor for sex in California was considered a misdemeanor, on par with vandalism, petty theft, and trespassing. As such, it was punishable by only up to a year in prison.
Last September, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bipartisan bill making this crime a felony if the victim was under 16 and allowing prosecutors to charge repeat offenders with a felony as well.
AB 379, a bipartisan bill put forward in late February, sought to extend that higher penalty to cases involving any victim under 18. However, on April 28, the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee refused to allow the bill to move forward unless the felony charge was stripped.
Over the next week, one of the bill’s authors, Democratic Assemblymember Maggy Krell, fought alongside Republican lawmakers to get the felony charge reinstated. They faced pushback from a number of Assembly Democrats, who fought to keep it out over concerns that the felony charge could be “used to abuse people of color and teens who are close in age.”
After stiff backlash from other party members, including Governor Newsom, the bill’s opponents agreed to an amended bill allowing for exceptions to the automatic felony when a suspect is within three years of a victim’s age. The revised bill was unanimously approved by the Assembly on May 15 and will proceed to the California Senate.
The fight over AB 379 is part of a larger push for demand-side laws, which go after one of the root causes of sex trafficking–consumers’ demand.
Laws like AB 379 work to decrease demand by increasing the potential cost of buying a child for sex. That cost can be financial, physical, or social. Strategies discussed in an anti-trafficking class at my law school included high fines, increased jail time, and public disclosure of buyers’ identities. Another way to reduce demand might involve cracking down on pornography, which grooms viewers into desiring increasingly extreme and perverted forms of sexual interaction.
However, legal solutions for reducing demand can only go so far. Ultimately, the demand for child sex trafficking–and for all forms of exploitation–lies in our hearts, which are desperately sick and in need of salvation.
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Learning to honor the image of God
The prophet Jeremiah lamented that the human heart “is deceitful above all things and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9). Without God’s saving grace, the heart is capable of unfathomable wickedness, including the desire to enslave and exploit others for personal gain.
Human trafficking is a grave sin against the image of God himself. Whether the trafficking is for sex or for labor, trafficking always involves treating another human being like an object–using a person, made in God’s image, for our own personal pleasure or economic gain.
And yet the core sin of human trafficking is a temptation we all face—to use another person as a means to our own selfish ends, in accordance with the fallen nature of our hearts. Without Christ, we are incapable of treating our fellow human beings with the dignity they deserve.
The good news is that in Christ, we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). God is capable of redeeming even the most wicked people—after all, he has redeemed us, who are no more righteous by our own merit than the worst trafficker on earth (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
God redeems and empowers his people to do what we could not otherwise—to “do to others what you would have them do to you,” rather than seeking ways to exploit them for personal gain (Luke 6:31).
Scripture commands us to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).
“Others” means everyone – from our next-door neighbors to the untold millions trapped in human trafficking. For some of us, they could be the same people.
As you go forward, pray for those trapped in horrific situations of exploitation, including children. Ask the Lord how you can help the vulnerable around you, and how he wants you to put others’ interests ahead of your own. And take refuge in the power of his transforming grace – for those who exploit, for those at risk, and for you.
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