Lawrence Taylor's failures reflect our own

Today's post is contributed by Women's Funding Network. As an expert resource, we would like to share timely information about the topic of sex trafficking. Victims of sex trafficking in central Indiana can receive support from The Julian Center and IPATH (the Indiana Protection of Abused and Trafficked Humans), which runs a 24-hour hotline: 1-800-928-6403.

We welcome your input and feedback on this post and this issue.

Contributed by Women's Funding Network

Hall of Fame linebacker and Dancing With the Stars personality, Lawrence Taylor, may face up to four years in jail. Taylor is accused of third degree rape after having paid for sex with a 16-year-old girl in May. His next court appearance was scheduled today, June 24.

The message of the story is not limited to a celebrity gone bad, wasting his fame and fortune as hardworking Americans struggle. The real American tragedy is it takes the alleged personal failure of an individual celebrity to shine a national spotlight on our collective failure as a society to protect our children.

Unfortunately, what allegedly occurred in a New York Holiday Inn hotel room is not an isolated incident.

Through coercion, abuse, and imprisonment, as many as 300,000 American children – particularly teen girls – are at risk for commercial sexual exploitation each year.

Women's Funding Network, in partnership with “A Future. Not A Past.,” recently released findings of a pilot study that explored the demand for adolescent girls who are commercially sexually exploited in Georgia. The “Demand Study” details a first-of-its-kind study to quantify, describe, and understand demand for commercial sexual exploitation in Georgia.

The numbers are staggering – 12,400 men pay for sex with a young female in Georgia every month. These men account for 8,700 paid sex acts with adolescent females each month, which means that each adolescent female is exploited an average of three times per day.

Unfortunately, Georgia isn’t the only state where girls are being commercially sexually exploited at alarming rates. Research found that in New York, 2,880 adolescent girls were commercially sexually exploited through Web sites, massage parlors, and escort services in February 2010. Of those, a strong majority, 67 percent, were commercially sexually exploited over the Internet.

In Michigan, 117 adolescent girls were commercially sexually exploited through Internet Web sites and escort services in February, 2010, and 87 percent of the teens were commercially sexually exploited through the Internet.

Sex traffickers and “johns” are clearly moving their activities off the streets and into the veil of anonymity that the Internet provides.

According to the complaint against Rasheed Davis – the 28-year-old man who allegedly pimped the teen girl to Lawrence Taylor – he took nearly nude cell phone photos of the 16-year-old girl and used them to connect with customers online.

It is time to have an open and honest conversation about what and who is sustaining this growing market.

Web sites must do more self-regulation to ensure minors are not commercially sexually exploited on their sites. If they don’t do enough, the public and government must intervene.

Hotels must also take action. Hotel staff members have to be trained on easy and acceptable corporate policies to report incidents of sex solicitation in their hotels, particularly when they believe a minor is involved. Similarly, hotel management needs to stress reporting such activity is expected. Hotel guests can also be made more alert by receiving information on warning signs and where to call to alert authorities — just by adding this information to their hotel key cards.

Businesses are not the only ones that have to make a shift.

As Taylor faces his day in court, the time is now to enforce zero tolerance for the commercial sexual exploitation of our children. We must move from denial to outrage to action. Our children are waiting, and they deserve no less.