Pretty much ~everybody on the internet I can find talking about the issue both mischaracterizes and exaggerates the extent of child sex work inside the United States, often to a patently absurd degree. Wikipedia alone reports that there are anywhere from “100,000-1,000,000” child prostitutes in the U.S. There are only ~75 million children in the U.S., so I guess Wikipedia thinks it’s possible that more than 1% of people aged 0-17 are prostitutes. As in most cases, these numbers are sourced from “anti sex trafficking” organizations that, as far as I can tell, completely make them up.
Actual child sex workers—the kind that get arrested, because people don’t like child prostitution—are mostly children who pass themselves off as adults in order to make money. Part of the confusion comes from the fact that the government classifies any instance of child prostitution as human trafficking, regardless of whether or not there’s evidence the child was coerced. Thus, when the Department of Justice reports that federal law enforcement investigated “2,515 instances of suspected human trafficking” from 2008-2010, and that “forty percent involved prostitution of a child or child sexual exploitation”, it means that it investigated ~1000 possible cases of child prostitution, not that it found 1000 child sex slaves.
People believe a lot of crazy things, but I am genuinely flabbergasted at how many people find it plausible that there’s an entire underworld industry of kidnapping children and selling them to pedophiles in first world countries. I know why the anti sex trafficking orgs sell these stories—they’re trying to attract donations, and who is going to call out an “anti sex trafficking” charity? But surely most people realize that it would be very hard for an organized child rape cabal to spread word about their offerings to customers without someone alerting police.
They do the same thing with “child pornography”: that’s mostly teenagers sexting. And a girl was convicted for it too, charged with distributing child pornography of herself: link.
The other day I was trying to think of information leaks that a competent conspiracy couldn’t prevent, regarding this. I just thought of one small one: people will sometimes randomly die or have their homes raided. If the slavery is common, then sometimes the slaves will be discovered during these events. Even if the escapees wanted to silence the story out of shame, cops would probably gossip to the press.
So you can probably tally such events, crunch the numbers, and get a decent conspiracy-resistant estimate.
But surely most people realize that it would be very hard for an organized child rape cabal to spread word about their offerings to customers without someone alerting police.
Epstein seemed to run something like an organized child rape cabal and most people involved in it didn’t go to prison.
Epstein was an amateur rapist, not a pro rapist. His cabal—the parts of it that are actually confirmed and not just speculated about baselessly—seems extremely limited in scope compared to the kinds of industrial conspiracies that people propose about child sex work. Most of epstein’s victims only ever had sex with Epstein, and only one of them—Virginia Giuffre—ever appears to have publicly claimed being passed around to many of Epstein’s friends.
What I am referring to are claims an underworld industry for exploiting children the primary purpose of which is making money. For example, in the Sound of Freedom, a large part of the plot hinges on the idea that there are professionals who literally bring kidnapped children from South America into the United States so that pedophiles here can have sex with them. I submit that this industry in particular does not exist, or at least would be a terrible way to make money on a risk-adjusted basis compared to drug dealing.
Wikipedia currently writes “Epstein installed concealed cameras in numerous places on his properties to allegedly record sexual activity with underage girls of prominent people for criminal purposes such as blackmail.”
This suggests that more than one underage girl was passed around. The fact that the others don’t have the same courage as Virginia Giuffre to speak publically about it, does not mean that there wasn’t a problem.
It does show that the system to suppress information about it is working well, which is also shown by the fact that the FBI did not lose that video stack as material for prosecuting all those people.
I submit that this industry in particular does not exist, or at least would be a terrible way to make money on a risk-adjusted basis compared to drug dealing.
The blackmail potential existing matters in addition to being directly paid. J. Edgar Hoover could be effectively blackmailed by the mafia into saying that there’s no mafia by having photos of his homosexual activities, but these days that wouldn’t be enough to blackmail anybody.
Understanding how organizations like Epsteins operate is hard because they do everything they can to avoid being well understood.
As far as industry goes, it’s quite old but https://wikileaks.org/wiki/an_insight_into_child_porn is a good read about how child pornography worked two decades ago. It’s not the same as child prostitution but it’s a good article about ground realities.
Pretty much ~everybody on the internet I can find talking about the issue both mischaracterizes and exaggerates the extent of child sex work inside the United States, often to a patently absurd degree. Wikipedia alone reports that there are anywhere from “100,000-1,000,000” child prostitutes in the U.S. There are only ~75 million children in the U.S., so I guess Wikipedia thinks it’s possible that more than 1% of people aged 0-17 are prostitutes. As in most cases, these numbers are sourced from “anti sex trafficking” organizations that, as far as I can tell, completely make them up.
Actual child sex workers—the kind that get arrested, because people don’t like child prostitution—are mostly children who pass themselves off as adults in order to make money. Part of the confusion comes from the fact that the government classifies any instance of child prostitution as human trafficking, regardless of whether or not there’s evidence the child was coerced. Thus, when the Department of Justice reports that federal law enforcement investigated “2,515 instances of suspected human trafficking” from 2008-2010, and that “forty percent involved prostitution of a child or child sexual exploitation”, it means that it investigated ~1000 possible cases of child prostitution, not that it found 1000 child sex slaves.
People believe a lot of crazy things, but I am genuinely flabbergasted at how many people find it plausible that there’s an entire underworld industry of kidnapping children and selling them to pedophiles in first world countries. I know why the anti sex trafficking orgs sell these stories—they’re trying to attract donations, and who is going to call out an “anti sex trafficking” charity? But surely most people realize that it would be very hard for an organized child rape cabal to spread word about their offerings to customers without someone alerting police.
They do the same thing with “child pornography”: that’s mostly teenagers sexting. And a girl was convicted for it too, charged with distributing child pornography of herself: link.
Haven’t looked too closely at this, but my initial two thoughts:
child consent is tricky.
likely many are foreign children, which may or may not be in the 75 million statistic
It is good to think critically, but I think it would be beneficial to present more evidence before making the claim or conclusion
The other day I was trying to think of information leaks that a competent conspiracy couldn’t prevent, regarding this. I just thought of one small one: people will sometimes randomly die or have their homes raided. If the slavery is common, then sometimes the slaves will be discovered during these events. Even if the escapees wanted to silence the story out of shame, cops would probably gossip to the press.
So you can probably tally such events, crunch the numbers, and get a decent conspiracy-resistant estimate.
Epstein seemed to run something like an organized child rape cabal and most people involved in it didn’t go to prison.
Epstein was an amateur rapist, not a pro rapist. His cabal—the parts of it that are actually confirmed and not just speculated about baselessly—seems extremely limited in scope compared to the kinds of industrial conspiracies that people propose about child sex work. Most of epstein’s victims only ever had sex with Epstein, and only one of them—Virginia Giuffre—ever appears to have publicly claimed being passed around to many of Epstein’s friends.
What I am referring to are claims an underworld industry for exploiting children the primary purpose of which is making money. For example, in the Sound of Freedom, a large part of the plot hinges on the idea that there are professionals who literally bring kidnapped children from South America into the United States so that pedophiles here can have sex with them. I submit that this industry in particular does not exist, or at least would be a terrible way to make money on a risk-adjusted basis compared to drug dealing.
Wikipedia currently writes “Epstein installed concealed cameras in numerous places on his properties to allegedly record sexual activity with underage girls of prominent people for criminal purposes such as blackmail.”
This suggests that more than one underage girl was passed around. The fact that the others don’t have the same courage as Virginia Giuffre to speak publically about it, does not mean that there wasn’t a problem.
It does show that the system to suppress information about it is working well, which is also shown by the fact that the FBI did not lose that video stack as material for prosecuting all those people.
The blackmail potential existing matters in addition to being directly paid. J. Edgar Hoover could be effectively blackmailed by the mafia into saying that there’s no mafia by having photos of his homosexual activities, but these days that wouldn’t be enough to blackmail anybody.
Understanding how organizations like Epsteins operate is hard because they do everything they can to avoid being well understood.
As far as industry goes, it’s quite old but https://wikileaks.org/wiki/an_insight_into_child_porn is a good read about how child pornography worked two decades ago. It’s not the same as child prostitution but it’s a good article about ground realities.