Tim Swarens of the IndyStar has a ten-column series, EXPLOITED: Inside the Dark World of Child Trafficking.  Iâve only read the first piece: Who buys a child for sex?  Otherwise ordinary men. Â
This project began with a question: Who buys a 15-year-old child for sex?
The answer: Many otherwise ordinary men. They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse.
âTheyâre in all walks of life,â a 17-year-old survivor from the Midwest, trafficked when she was 15, said about the more than 150 men who purchased her in a month. âSome could be upstanding people in the community. It was mostly people in their 40s, living in the suburbs, who were coming to get the stuff they were missing.â
But sex buyers also are shielded by the same cultural attitudes and biases â men are entitled to sex, victims are somehow to blame â that have long protected powerful men who harass and assault women in the workplace and other settings.
Itâs tempting to put buyers who exploit children in a box â to say that all of them are pedophiles, a small percentage of the population driven by a deep sickness. But researchers and survivors say thatâs not the case.
ECPAT International researchers found that the great majority of men who pay to exploit children are opportunists. They donât set out specifically to buy sex with a child, but neither do they walk away when faced with the temptation.
I donât want to speak too soon, because I havenât read anything else of the series, and itâs possible there is/will be backlash from people in the human trafficking community, but for right now, Iâm glad thereâs at least one journalist whoâs doing this, rather than breathlessly speculating over the plight of the white working class cultural conservatives as click- and pulitzer-bait.