OUR MISSION

Established in 1997, Captive Daughters’ recognizes that sex trafficking is a violation of fundamental human rights that profoundly affects the welfare of both women and children. Our mission is to mobilize the global will to end the sex trafficking of women and children through public education and creative media.

WHAT IS SEX TRAFFICKING?

All over the world girls are being forced to have sex with strangers for money -- money that will go into the pockets of modern-day slave traders. They might be Nepali girls, kidnapped from their villages and enslaved in Indian brothels. They could be Thai girls, sold by their parents to traffickers who move them to Japan to become “entertainers” as bar girls. Some are Albanian women seeking domestic work in Italy, who are trafficked into brothels through the “Balkan Route” -- a notorious trafficking route used by some of the most vicious traffickers in Europe. Or perhaps they are small-town American runaways, alone and hungry in an unfamiliar city, where pimps masquerading as boyfriends force them to work the streets under threat of violence.

In Asia alone, more than one million women and girls are sold into prostitution each year. While sex trafficking is usually associated with Asia and other countries where women traditionally have had a lesser status, the sex trade is also a growing, profitable business in North America. Women and girls are forced into the global sex industry to meet the demand of the countless millions of men who spend billions of dollars annually to sexually exploit women and children around the world. This industry includes not only prostitution but also pornography, sex tours, local massage parlors and neighborhood strip clubs. Once an individual enters the sex trade, it is very difficult to leave – a fact well known to the global sex industry.

HOW SEX TRAFFICKING OCCURS

In some countries, poor families will sell a daughter to a trafficker or pimp, who either buys the girl outright or provides a loan called a “debt bond” to the family, which the girl must pay off by selling her body for sex. It may take years for the girl to earn enough money to buy her freedom, and by then, she may be infected with AIDS or another disease. In some cases, a trafficker may promise a girl a legitimate job, such as housekeeping or childcare, in another country. When the girl arrives at her destination, her passport is taken and she is forced into prostitution.

One reason that foreign females are targeted is that the demand for prostitutes in a particular country may be greater than the number of women in that country who are willing to be prostitutes. It is also much more difficult for an enslaved girl to escape in a country whose language and customs are unfamiliar. Even if she does escape, she often cannot return home because of the social stigma and lack of documentation.

DEMAND

Captive Daughters seeks to draw public attention to the role played by millions of men who fuel the demand for women and children and thereby sustain the global sex industry and the enslavement of women and children. Without male demand, sex trafficking would not exist. 
            
Decreasing the demand for trafficked women and children requires decreasing the demand for prostitution. Too often laws regarding prostitution are focused solely on those who are prostituted and not on the men who create the demand for them. To end trafficking, efforts must be made to both change men’s attitudes and to deter repeat and future offenders. We believe that these efforts must involve collaboration among city and state governments, law enforcement and social service providers in order to be effective.

CAPTIVE DAUGHTERS’ PUBLIC EDUCATION ACTIVITIES

• We support the creation of films, books and other media that promote awareness of the sexual exploitation of women and children.www.captivedaughtersfilms.org, www.captivedaughtersmedia.org
• We encourage the global public to address demand, the source of sex trafficking: those whose sexual desires create a need for enslaved children
• We urge the global community to take responsibility for governmental and police complicity in human trafficking, a primary key to the growth of the trafficking industry
• We actively oppose the global sex industry, specifically with regard to the exploitation of     women and children.
• We adhere to the philosophy of the Office to Monitor & Combat Trafficking of the U.S. Department of State, which holds that prostitution and trafficking are directly linked and that the legalization of prostitution does not reduce the demand for trafficked women and children. For more information visit www.state.gov/g/tip/

HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT THE WORK OF CAPTIVE DAUGHTERS

• Visit our Facebook page and become a Fan. Leave a note on our Wall to let us know what you’re thinking on the issue of trafficking.
• Follow us on Twitter! @captivedaughter – note no “s” in the name.
• Follow us on our YouTube channel - CaptiveDaughters
• Work with us on public education – download this brochure and send it to your friends, photocopy it for events, and stay in touch with us on public education events as to how we can assist YOUR public education on sex trafficking.  
• Be sure to keep checking our site www.captivedaughters.org for updated information – T-Shirts are coming soon!

Captive Daughters is supported solely from public donations. To make a donation, please visit our website: www.captivedaughters.org, click on Donate or send us a check payable to Captive Daughters at the address noted on this brochure.