Sex trafficking - Tolerating slavery

TRAFFICKING — enslaving might be a better, more accurate word — women and children for the sex trade is one of the great crimes of the modern world.

One of the great lies told by the sex industry is that very many sex workers are happy to be involved and are not in any way coerced. Some may be but a huge number are not and their plight is an indictment of the societies who tolerate it.

Recognising this, Sweden made it illegal to buy sex and thereby reduced the number of women and children kidnapped and smuggled into the country by pimps to be used, abused and then discarded.

This is not about sex, it is about the exploitation of the poor, the vulnerable and the weak by the powerful and unscrupulous. Slavery has been illegal for nearly two centuries and though it still exists in places that is no reason for us to tolerate it in our towns and cities.