“While globalization has led to an increased number of children and adults who are traded and trafficked internationally, and to a growing business of sex tourists who journey to developing countries for the sole purpose of purchasing sex, the majority of sexual exploitation occurs within a country’s own borders and involves native children and women with native men.”

Girls Like Us author Rachel Lloyd debunks the common misconception that sex trafficking is solely a product of globalization and does not occur or is not prevalent in the United States. Lloyd cites the fact that over 300 girls a year in the New York City area are victims of sex trafficking. 

“Nobody noticed. I feel invisible to everyone but the boys who are beginning to pay attention to me.”

Lloyd lays out how girls who experience abuse in childhood are particularly susceptible to looking for love or acceptance through sexual validation. She recalls her own lonely teenage years, in which she suffered at the hands of an abusive stepfather and an alcoholic mother and turned to male attention to attempt to receive the support she needed. Lloyd portrays this search for care through sex as a steppingstone to sexual exploitation and trafficking for vulnerable girls.

“Beyond their family backgrounds, what is the story of their neighborhoods, their communities, their cities?”

Lloyd points out that sexual exploitation of young girls occurs due to a range of factors, from family background to socioeconomic status and educational opportunities. She advocates for a more holistic understanding of the roots of sex trafficking in the United States, linking it to greater systemic issues such as structural oppression and generational poverty.