Experts: Sex Slavery Widespread in US

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6027308,00.html

NEW YORK (AP) - Raids that uncovered more than 70 suspected sex slaves focused on 20 brothels in the East, but they illustrated a long-ignored national problem found in towns large and small, experts say.

``It's a very overwhelming subject for a lot of people to recognize that there is slavery at this time in our country,'' said Carole Angel, staff attorney with the Immigrant Women Program of the women's rights advocacy group Legal Momentum in Washington. ``It's hard for us as humans to contemplate what this means.''

The concept of slavery in the 21st century is foreign to most people, agreed Jolene Smith, executive director of Free The Slaves, a Washington-based organization dedicated to ending slavery worldwide.

``Americans are conditioned to believe that slavery was a thing of the past,'' Smith said. ``We have to reeducate ourselves about this reality.''

On Tuesday, federal and local law enforcement raided brothels disguised as massage parlors, health spas and acupuncture clinics in New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia, arresting 31 people on trafficking charges.

It is shameful that the US press is not out front on this one. It is shameful that it happens to begin with, but doubly so that our press is silent about it.

Meanwhile, we get 24/7 on JonBenet's "killer." Damn, I wish we had a decent press here in America, not corporate shills, Olbermann excepted.

Durham paper. Guess it didn't go national because it did not involve any Duke athletes.

:sarcasm: