Branded with pimp’s name

San Diego street gangs have banded together for sex trafficking which now tops drugs. It’s a cash-rich business for pimps because the girls and women can be sold and resold daily. You have a product that you don’t have to keep in inventory.  You don’t have to purchase it. You don’t have to wait for the money to come back on this product and then buy it from the supplier.

Each girl can earn anywhere from $500 to $10,000 a night depending on whether they work the street or an event and not a penny goes into the girls’ pockets. Since gangs don’t file taxes, federal officials are reluctant to put a number on how much a pimp can earn annually from trafficking.

Child sex trafficking will stop only when people realize it’s a community problem. Many of the girls who end up in the slave trade are runaways and foster children.  Many also come from stable family backgrounds but were successfully manipulated by pimps.

These are not somebody else’s children.  These are our little girls who grew up in our neighborhoods, going to our schools. In some cases, they grew up in our own families.