When we accepted the honor of co-chairing this Task Force, we knew there was an issue, but we had no idea of the scale, the scope and the human tragedy being played out in our own communities. Girls, often as young as 13, are being lured, recruited and procured into sexual slavery by predators who profit from their endeavors, rob them of their dignity, and often wound them with lifelong scars, changing forever the trajectories of otherwise happy lives.

Poverty, violence and widespread gender inequity are the preconditions for trafficking, but not the only factors. Any one of the previously trafficked girls and women we have come to know could be our own daughter, our sister, our niece, our aunt. The diversity of those who are trafficked is sobering: any girl, anywhere, at any time.