Many child prostitution rings are busy through out the United States exploiting children.
Federal and state agencies are working to discover these organizations and many have been apprehended.
Businesses of prostitution have been found operating in urban as well as suburban and rural neighborhoods.
Annually, thousands of children run away from home.
Often they are lured into illegal solicitation and kept in service by abusers.
These entrepreneuring exploiters search out their victims in places where runaways may hang out.
They may find them using sleeping bags outside with other runaways, or panhandling for money on street corners, in front of stores and hanging out in libraries or other places that are free and offer shelter.
The exploiters are good at identifying who they can and can not take advantage of.
They are well aware that runaway children are in need of security and safe places to stay.
The very things that children lacked at home such as food, shelter, clothing, love, and a caring environment are the things they offer them to gain their trust and ultimately control.
In addition, these clever exploiters offer them the needed incentive of money.
After the users gain control of the runaway, all that's needed to keep them in their power is the threat of violent force.
When the exploited child is apprehended in unlawful activities by law enforcement they receive criminal charges and are often left with nowhere to go when released from juvenile centers or jail.
Their only alternative for survival is to go but back to what originally had enslaved them.
It is then possible to become a ward of the state and placed in a foster home or a shelter.
Unfortunately, safe houses that can provide crisis intervention, counseling, and medical care are scarce, especially in the rural areas.
Children don't necessarily need to be runaways to become targets of exploiters.
They can become victims right in their own neighborhoods.
Children can be taught survival skills that may keep them from becoming targets of abusers and help them escape would be abductors.
They can be taught how to defend themselves and educated of the dangers that lie beyond the home and how not be lured into dangerous situations.
But the greatest defenses that can be provided to a child to offset the outside dangers are the bonds formed between a parent and a child.
By far, this is the greatest security a child can be provided.
Children that are raised in secure loving homes are less likely to become victims of child abusers.