There are some things you expect from 15-year-old girls. Lots of pointless phone conversations and rapid-fire texting. Maybe a bad test grade or report card here and there. Falling outs with friends, overdramatized crushes on boys, and an exorbitant amount of time spent in the shower, the mirror, and the mall. But here’s a new twist to the things-a-teenage-girl-might-do repertoire: human trafficking.
Two 15-year-old Canadian gals -- and a 17-year-old who’s since gone on the lam -- are facing multiple charges after police say they forced other underage girls into prostitution. Using (surprise, surprise) social media, they corralled three victims between the ages of 13 and 17 to a home in Ottawa. The abductees were allegedly driven to various parts of the city, pimped into prostitution, and forced to perform sex acts on men. Wow. Talk about innocence lost and, apparently, stolen.
It’s 10:30. Do you know where your teenager is?
To make matters worse, police say there’s no evidence that the girls acted on behalf of a manipulative adult like a pimp, a wayward parent, or even a nasty older sibling. They may have, however, been products of the human trafficking system themselves at some point and decided to balk against the prostituting and stand up on the money-making end of the deal instead. It’s the classic cycle of victimization when the underdog becomes the aggressor and repeats the very pattern they suffered.
That’s all speculation, though. They could just be girls with a premature, early developed penchant for taking advantage of unsuspecting peers, like A Clockwork Orange type of affair. And that’s even more frightening than the standard issue male perverts and pedophiles lurking about to rob them of their virtue. Who sees a teenage girl as a potential threat to the sexual sanctity of another teenage girl?
We’re always hollering about keeping our kids safe on social media, but I’m pretty sure most of us wouldn’t see this kind of rancidness coming on Facebook or Twitter because, again, it’s cloaked in the innocence of an average teenage girl hangout. Incidentally, human trafficking as a whole is on the rise in the U.S. So the girls’ involvement is just another aspect to a socially crippling sign of the times.
How harshly should the girls be punished?
Image via meghannash/Flickr
Ashley Is a Widow Who Stays Strong...
This Hot Dad Wants to Vacuum Your Rug
This Hot Dad Wants to Do Your Ironing
KStew Refuses to Shower
Comments 17
The idea of young teen girls being human traffickers contrary to your cherished view of women being perfect? Too bad! It happens!
The deserve what is coming to them as prescribed by Canadian laws...
This happens in the United States. Has been happening in the United States for decades without SOCIAL MEDIA. There was a case in Florida where a new to town teenage girl got to know another girl and had a pretend family, etc to lure the girl into prostitution. The girl went to the new kid's house to have a sleepover and hang out, she was drugged and when she came to a few times she was being raped. She had been sold by the time she woke up to someone and was being transported there. She managed to escape and call 911 and her mom. The police didn't believe her because she had run away before and was known as promiscious. The people who did that to that girl are still free to my knowledge. Sometimes there aren't happy endings, many times these kids just vanish into thin air. Its just like the 125,000 African American kids who disappear every year in America too. Where do they go and why isn't anyone concerned about it? I tried to teach my college students this information. That human trafficking and slavery still exists. They could not wrap their heads around this topic. They didn't understand what it meant even though they got drug trafficking down and understood that. We need to realize that the world's problems are here too. That there is evil everywhere. And the only thing we can do about it is raise conscious kids, who know to watch their surroundings and to spot things that seem out of place and odd, and what to do when they notice those things.
So, yeah. This stuff can happen everywhere and anywhere.
that really surprises me, thats new, even for mean girls. parents, how are we failing our kids so badly? so many lost in all that, both sides and their families. lets hope their parents dont bail them out of jail, parents have to let their kids learn a lesson!!! that is a huge part of the problem : ( its all so sad.