More than Just a

Missing Child
Written by: Luke Morris

Its cold. Damp. Quiet. All she can

hear are the voices upstairs and her own
breath. Shes scared. She wonders what will
happen to her next. First she was taken from
her family. Now, almost a week later, shes
locked in someones basement. She
constantly cleans, cooks, and takes abuse.
Sadly, this is the reality for many women,
children, and even sometimes, men. Slavery
really is a modern day problem.

What really is modern

slavery?
Slavery is the status or condition of a
person over whom any or all of the powers
attaching to the right of ownership are
exercised. Slavery is spread by the slave
trade. The slave trade includes all acts
involved in the capture, acquisition or
disposal of a person with intent to reduce
him to slavery.
Slavery can affect
anyone and
everyone, but the
most likely victims
are women and
children. Women
and

children are especially targeted by

manipulative and violent traffickers seeking
to profit from vulnerable persons in the sex
industry (Dalton 12). This might not be
what you want to hear but its the cold dark
truth of the matter.
Slavery happens all over the world.
Human traffickingis commonly thought
to be contained to distant countries like
Thailand, India, or ex-soviet nations.
However, the reality is that human
traffickers operate within the United States
and exploit both foreign nationals and U.S.
citizens in the commercial sex industry and
in labor industrys (Dalton 12). Most
people dont realize how many people are
still victims of slavery. Nearly 36,000,000
people around the world live in some form
of modern slavery, according to a new
report (Sifferlin). There are enough people
in slavery to fill a professional football
stadium 450 times!

The True Brutality of

Modern Slavery
Being a slave is a terrible life. You
work all day, get abused, get sexually
harassed, and you are not even treated like a
human being. Slave owners are brutal and
horrible people. They buy human beings for
their own selfish purposes and
conveniences. Some owners can be nicer to
their slaves than others but most of those
inhumane people treat slaves like dirt.
Slave owners exercise physical violence or
psychological control over their slaves to
keep them from running away (Reitz 16).
There are many ways a person can
end up in slavery. You can get taken away at
a young age, tricked into it, or simply you
could just be born into slavery. Even with all
those ways to get into slavery, the most

likely cause of it (at least in foreign

countries) is because a family owes a debt to
another family and can never pay it,
throughout the generations. Their fathers
worked for this contractor and their fathers
before them; generations working to pay off
a debt, the origin of which is long forgotten
(Reitz 15).
Abolitionist is defined in the
dictionary as a person who favors the
abolition of any law or practice deemed
harmful to society(dictionary.com). Most
famously, abolitionists are known for being
the main supporters of eliminating slavery
from the United States. Abolitionists were
amazing people, in fact, they still are. There
are still abolitionists out in the world today,
they just have a different goal this time.
Abolitionists once needed to convince the
world that slavery was immoral; now they
must convince the world that it exists
(Dalton 13).

How You Can Help

There are many ways that you can

help end modern slavery. You can start by
donating to one of many organizations that
are committed to ending this horrible thing.
This horrible thing being that of our fellow
human beings are enslaved by others. This
atrocity should have ended so long ago. One
of those organizations is called Pashion
(Fighting modern slavery). This organization
brings teens together to help donate to the
cause.
Hopefully you can now see that
slavery does really still exist, and needs to
be stopped. Thousands of people have lost
their freedom and are beaten and abused
because they are slaves. People should be
disgusted to realize that this has been going
on for so long without them noticing.
Slavery is still very real, and it is more
dangerous than ever.

Works Cited

Dalton, J. Ryan. "Modern-Day Slavery. (Cover Story)." Tennessee Bar Journal 49.9 (2013):
12- 17. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 Jan. 2015
Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.
Reitz, Jessica. Documenting Modern Slavery in India. Kennedy school Review 1.(2007):
15-19. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Jan. 2015
Sifferlin, Alexandra.36 Million People Live In Modern Slavery, Report Says.
Time.Com (2014):N.PAG. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 Jan. 2015.
Video: Fighting Modern Slavery. Local Broadcast Video Content 6 Jan. 2012.
Student Resources in Context. Web.29 Jan. 2015.