Calling attention to the problem of child sex trafficking

Page Last Updated: Tuesday January 19, 2010 7:10am PST

Gerard Ramalho reporting

It’s been called a form of modern-day slavery: trafficking children for work in the illegal sex industry.

Police estimate there are more than one million victims across the country and, unfortunately, Las Vegas is at the center of it all.

"We arrest at least 150, up to 300 kids every single year for prostitution and these are children under the age of 18 who end up working in a grown-up world,” says Alexis Kennedy, UNLV Department of Criminal Justice.

Volunteers with the group Stop Child Trafficking Now felt it only fitting to host an awareness meeting on Martin Luther King Day since the civil rights leader spent much of his life fighting for justice and equality.

The organization now fighting to end the abuse is the National Asian Pacific Women’s Forum. They say Asian women are the largest group trafficked into the United States, specifically for work in the industry.

“There is, at some point, where that dream goes bad and women are promised things that don't materialize when they come here,” says Kathleen Bergquist, National Asian Pacific Women's Forum.

Volunteers say funds are needed to pay for special task force officers who investigate predators and help the victims.

"We're struggling in the economic times in terms of programs being cut and we've just got hundreds of kids that we don't know how to help.”

But police and others agree that the best way to tackle the problem is to first make people aware. They quote Dr. King, who said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

For more information or to get involved, contact Stop Child Trafficking Now at www.SCTNOW.org.

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