Lax laws put children at risk, even in Paradise:

This article came to may attention because it mentions how the 16-year-old victim of alleged human trafficker Marcus X Arrington was pimped out by Arrington on craigslist’s erotic service section. The girl was allegedly forced to turn tricks sometimes 6 to 8 times a day. Normally this is where I’d go into a tirade about how craigslist allows human trafficking to go on and does nothing about but not this time. This time I have some bigger fish to fry.

This article from the Toronto Star written by Marc and Craig Kielburger who are children’s rights activists and co-founded Free The Children is all about how Hawaii, where Arrington committed his crimes, and seven other US states have no laws regarding human trafficking. I wasn’t able to find out what the other states are so we’ll focus on Hawaii right now.

What the hell? How could any state not have laws about human trafficking? As the article points out the federal government is slow to prosecute human trafficking cases and usually concerned with major rings not two-bit punks like Arrington. At the most Arrington could be sent away for only 10 years. And here’s the even sadder part…

Traffickers are charged based on their arranging the meeting. But, because the girl is actually the one who makes the transaction, she too is arrested.

If anyone from Hawaii is reading this I urge you to write to your state government to have these laws changed and tell people who you know about this and ask them to do the same.

And when I find out the other seven states I’ll be urging the people of those states to do the same.

While I’m at it on federal, state and local levels there needs to be real sentences for these predators that pimp out children and the miscreants that use their services.