Yeah I feel this film under-represented the way the traffickers mess with their victims' heads. They beat them, drug them, threaten them and all their loved ones. If you run away I'll kidnap, rape, and kill your little sister, that kind of thing. They starve them. And when they are close to death, they will give them just enough food to get them to think of them as their saviors. After repeated rapes, they will tell them that they are dirty and have done terrible, unforgivable things (as if they CHOSE to be pimped out), and that no one would ever accept them back into their families when they learn what they have done, and that the pimp/trafficker and fellow victims (the other child prostitutes) are the only ones who know the "real" person they are and all they have done and still accepts them. It creates a powerful trauma bond with their trafficker. Sometimes they even come to think of their trafficker as their boyfriend.
Add to that the fact that in most countries--certainly here in the US where I live--we also treat these victims as criminals. We arrest them and charge them with prostitution. We send them to juvenile hall. We put them in group homes. We charge them with drug crimes, when usually they have been drugged by their pimps or maybe they are using drugs/alcohol just to numb the pain. But we treat them like criminals who have made choices. So they don't want to go to the police or authorities.
And of course many of these victims were already in the "system" at some point in their lives anyway and have developed a natural fear of authority figures like cops. They were runaways from foster care, or were in the child welfare system, or place in group home already because of parental neglect or drug abuse, etc.
reply
share