Many of you may have heard on the news about a missing five-year-old Shaniya Davis from Fayetteville, North Carolina, which first broke news this week as news of her disappearance led authorities into a desperate search for her safe return.  The young girl was reportedly taken from the mobile-home of her mother while on a visit, the child lived with her father, Bradley Lockhart, who had full custody of the the child.

The story soon took a shocking turn as video was captured of the young girl being carried into a hotel room by a man.  Soon the darker reality of the case began to emerge, and for many in this military town nothing was more paralyzing as the focus turned to the young girls mother, who was arrested for allegedly selling her own daughter into prostitution.  Shaniya’s mother, Antoinette Nicole Davis, was arrested yesterday on charges related to prostitution and human trafficking and felony child abuse.  Authorities on the case reported that the girls mother;

knowingly provide[d] Shaniya Davis with the intent that she be held in sexual servitude,” and she “permit[ted] an act of prostitution (Huffington Post).

The man in the video, 20 year-old Mario McNeil, was identified and has since been arrested, admitting kidnapping, however has not admitted guilt for any of the other charges.  One other man was also arrested, but has been subsequently released.  Leads and countless searches for the missing girl where tirelessly perused over the next couple of days.  However the frantic search for Shaniya, lead by Fayetteville police and hundreds of volunteers, sadly ended their search today with the discovery of her body in a wooded area off the side of a rural road near Sanford, 30 miles from Fayetteville (MSNBC/AP).

Ironically I was just down in Fayetteville the other weekend visiting friends, one of which said that they could use someone like me down there, however not even they were thinking of victims as young as 5, as they were making note of the barrage of strip clubs that litter the county.  It was a friend who broke the news to me that her body was found as she was driving down Highway 87 and saw the search and rescue crews at the site where the body was found. While sitting at a dinner, not far from where Shaniya’s body was found, I was sitting there discussing my anti-trafficking work with some people when the age old topic of “where” trafficking occurs came up. The expected, “not here” slipped quickly from nearly everyone’s mouth as it does in most small towns, and big ones as well.  Of course I was quick to reply with “trafficking happens everywhere, even here”, little did I know that this story would soon break and the reality of my words, and my life’s work, would be so quickly brought to light in the town soon after my departure.  As the story is breaking national media and hitting the anti-trafficking circles, it  goes to really show that human trafficking really is in every town…big or small.  While I never wanted to see the reality of human trafficking play out so vividly and end so tragically for such a young victim, I am sadly not all that shocked.  Stories of people selling there own children are sadly not new, nor are they rare.  Although one tends to think these are stories that come out of Africa or SE Asia, but this little girl is far from alone in the US.

So how and why does human trafficking happen without bounds?  First you want to ask, as we all do, “How can a mother sale her child…sell her for sex?”, and while the desperation of addiction and poverty have a role to play, the other question we fail to ask is “who could buy a 5 year-old…who could buy another person?”  The heartening reality is that it is the second largest black-market industry in the world, just behind arms and capping that of the drug market, and it is fueled by demand. The market for sex young children exists, in fact it thrives, even in rural American towns.

The average age of entry into prostitution in the United States is 11-13 years-old, a reality I have seen all to often, but one that remains in the shadows of our society.  Our city streets and rural towns will continue to see the innocence of so many young girls, and boys, victimized as long as the demand for sex with children continues and continues to remain in the shadows.  We have to wake to the reality that there are buyers of sex with children along the dusty streets of Phnom Penh, the busy streets of our nations capital and the rural roads of our ‘All American’ towns.