Underage Sex Trafficking: Ashton Kutcher Is Wrong

Bestiality is still legal in Florida for now, but everyone can agree that underage sex trafficking is not. Ashton Kutcher has been spouting off numbers in his latest media campaign, claiming there are 100,000 to 300,000 children in America forced into prostitution each year. He's wrong.We know because we spent...

By Devin Desjarlais

June 29, 2011

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Bestiality is still legal in Florida for now, but everyone can agree that underage sex trafficking is not. Ashton Kutcher has been spouting off numbers in his latest media campaign, claiming there are 100,000 to 300,000 children in America forced into prostitution each year. He's wrong.

We know because we spent two months researching law enforcement data.

We examined arrest reports during a ten-year period for juvenile prostitution in the nation's 37 largest cities and found an average of 827 arrests per year.

That amounts to roughly 8,270 arrests in a decade, which is far fewer than 300,000 arrests per year.

Want to know how many of those children are in Fort Lauderdale/Broward County? Check out this graphic.

Read more in the Village Voice's article on underage sex trafficking.

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