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If you’re buying into Ashton Kutcher’s media blitz about underage sex trafficking, and think 100,000 to 300,000 children in America become prostitutes every year, you’ve been Punk’d.
Kutcher’s stats are way off — which he’d know if he did a little research before taking up a cause and blindly throwing around a number based on a rough estimation of how many kids are at risk for prostitution.
Village Voice Media actually researched the subject, and while underage sex trafficking is certainly a problem, it’s not nearly as dire as Kutcher would have you believe.
VVM staffers spent two months investigating arrests for juvenile prostitution in the nation’s 37 largest cities during a 10-year period, and they found records for only 8,263 arrests across America. This doesn’t mean other child prostitutes aren’t slipping through the cracks, but 8,263 over a decade is a far cry from 300,000 per year.
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Read more in the Village Voice‘s investigation into underage sex trafficking.
