Families often do not find out until it is to late, if they ever do, that they have put their child or their sister or wife in harms way by allowing them to leave the home to help someone cook, clean or care for their children. (Bales, 1-3) .

             Dr. Kevin Bales estimates that 27 million people live as slaves worldwide. In his groundbreaking new book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, Bales advances the thesis that much of contemporary slavery has become a quasi-industrialized institution: a brutal but efficient and profitable process of entrapment, exploitation, and abandonment. Slaves are lured or abducted from their homes, psychologically and physically intimidated, forced to work in de-humanizing conditions, and then discarded when they are too ill to work. (Sage 4).

             The slavery of today is subtler, as there is no official government recognition of its existence in many nations, some would say including the US and there is a great deal of governmental inaction as millions of individuals in groups or alone are smuggled into other countries to provide labor for industries which cannot cull their own workers due to pa scale, conditions and pure greed. The problem is often born of rural poverty as the people, who are given at least a minimal choice are usually made promises that are never kept and often end up in circumstances even more dire than those they are fleeing. (Askew 328).

             At least 700,000 persons annually, primarily women and children, are trafficked within or across international borders. Many of these persons are trafficked into the international sex trade, often by force, fraud, or coercion. Traffickers primarily target women and girls, who are disproportionately affected by poverty, the lack of access to education, chronic unemployment, discrimination, and the lack of economic opportunities in countries of origin. (1) (Nelson 551).