Interest in Sex Trafficking

I think that the thing that first got me started on sex trafficking was when I was in Paris 3 summers ago. My dad, stepmom, best friend and I went on a few week vacation to europe and visited some of my dad's friends in the process. Katie and I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower so my dad called up one of his good friends who lived in Paris and arranged for us to meet up with him. We ate dinner in the Eiffel Tower and walked around outside a little while and eventually it was too late to take the subway back to where the friends' house was. We decided to catch a cab. My dad always told me of this park in Paris where he always went everytime he was there. He asked the cab to drive by it so that I could see it, even though it was extremely dark outside. As we were driving down this street, which had huge trees hanging over either sides and bushes that were about 15 feet back off of the sidewalk, I started to notice something. There were people in the bushes moving. It took me a while, but the park was huge and I quickly figured out that the people in the bushes were prostitutes and the people who were on the curbs were customers. My dad explained that he had never been at the park at night and had no intention to take me to see prostitution up close and personal. I asked the taxi driver to pull over. He told me that there was not enough room to pick up a girl. I told him that I didnt want to pick up a girl, but to rather just give her some money and have a conversation. As we slowed down, near this group of girls, I was astonished. They were tiny and they looked to be about 15. At the time i was about the same age. I got out of the car and walked up to them with about 30 euros. It was my own money and i figured better to give it to someone who needed it and couldn't find some without doing something bad. I told the girls to split it amoungst themselves for something that they needed that wasn't drugs. One of the girls spoke english, so she translated for the rest and smiled. They spoke simple french to me, which I understood at the time. They asked my name and how old I was and why I was there etc. Eventually after about 10 minutes, my dad calls my name from a few feet away. I turn around and there is this man running towards the group of girls and me. The girls start to walk away, but their facial expression scared me. They looked terrified and looked at me as if I was bothering them. The man walked up to me as I was walking to the taxi and told me that if I wasn't interested, then I could leave. I never got the names of the girls or thier ages, but it was easy to tell that they were not much older than me. Most of them were not from Paris, much less France and it was obvious from their darker complections. It was hard to tell under a street light, but they looked ghastly thin and smelled like it does when you walk through Saks on a saturday and every tourist in the world is sampling perfume. My dad explained to me the way back that the girls were probably not from Paris and the man that came up to us was their boss. His job was to keep business moving and I was stopping customers from picking up the girls. When I got back, I started doing some research on sex trafficking and I could not believe everything that I found. It was 10 times worse than I imagined. These girls are my age and even as young as my boyfriends youngest sister, and it just astonishes me that this happens. Its hard because I knew that I couldn't save the girls in the park and I think about them from time to time. I felt that I was talking to my friends back home, only these were girls forced to have sex with men day in and day out with little protection, if lucky. They didn't get much to eat and I hope to this day that the money I gave them didn't go to drugs. It's horrible to say, but if it did go to drugs, then I hope that the drugs helped them not feel the pain because what they are put through is torture and must be stopped.