Feminists and others that are opposed to prostitution puposefully confuse issues like:

• voluntary vs. forced prostitution,
• adult vs adolescent vs child prostitution.

Here is an analysis of such a confusing article that allows  for an adolescent to be a “trafficked child” even when there is no trafficker.

But the human traffickers who ensnared her had a different vision for Lena, shipping her to America and exploiting her in the sex industry for profit. They met her at the airport with news that her study abroad placement had been changed. She was given new bus tickets and sent off to Detroit, Michigan. Once there they took her passport and her freedom.

After almost a year of enslavement, Lena risked her life to make a daring escape.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/11/25/carr.human.trafficking/index.html

Now lots of questions arise. How can a girl be kept imprisioned for a year, while in constant contact with customers? Are there any details that were omitted? did Lena really come with an I-5 Student visa? How come her schoold did not miss her? Or was she smuggled into the US, consensually?

Now, in the US, prostitution is illegal. This might be a good reason for girls to claim being a trafficing victim when caught. But, let us suppose the story is true. I believe such stories exist, but they are probably very rare.

The “Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School [...] works to identify solutions to combat human trafficking“.  I am here to help to identify such solutions:

How can such tragedies be avoided? Well, this is similar to the drug industry: legalizing lighter drugs would solve a lot of the crime connected to drug trading. Equally, the problems of true human trafficing can be solved by methods that Mrs. Carr probably would not endorse:

1. legalizing prostitution and
2. legalizing prostitution by foreigners by emitting work visa to sex workers

would make most human trafficers jobless.  Easy availability of 18 year old legal prostitutes would probably reduce the desire for 16 year old illegal jail bait.

Now Mrs. Carr somehow changes topic. Lena was seemingly not underage, but she mixes these things up with child prostitution.  Children are under 12 or under 14 years old, but prostitution of adolescents does not sound as catchy as child prostitution, so conveniently, Mrs. Carr introduces some more confusion.

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