Ed Royce: “This Saturday on January 11, people throughout our country here, people throughout the world will be observing Human…”

“This Saturday on January 11, people throughout our country here, people throughout the world will be observing Human Trafficking Awareness Day. The start of this new year I think is a fitting time to focus on the shameful fact that human slavery is not a relic of ancient history, that in fact it is with us today. It is a brutal reality. A reality faced by more than 20 million victims around the world, many of them trafficked for labor, but increasingly for underaged girls. For young women, this is a case where they are exploited in this trafficking as well. Even in my work as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I have learned that human trafficking is no longer just a problem ``over there.'' It is a problem in our communities here. It is a problem in developing economies, but also it is a problem in the United States and in Europe. It is a scourge even in the communities that we serve here and that we represent. In my own community in the last two years, the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force assisted 250 victims. Ninety-three percent were women, most of them underage, 80 of them from foreign countries. At our November field hearing in Fullerton, the Orange County district attorney testified that, shockingly--we are speaking now about trafficking, sexual trafficking--``shockingly the average age of a child being trafficked in this country is 12'' years of age.…”