What are THESE Teens Doing for Lent?

So, what are you doing for Lent? Some fasting, prayer and almsgiving?

Graphic from beholdthelambministry.com

Lately, my heart has been heavy thinking about the many people in our world, our country, my state, who experience the Way of the Cross in their every day lives. Before and after the Super Bowl there was a lot of attention given to the issue of sex trafficking. Fortunately, this led to some arrests and the break up of a traffic ring.

What a resurrection time for those who were imprisoned and are finally set free!

So, what about all rest of the teens and women enslaved to the sex business? Who will help rescue them?  This local news video clip gets to something even more basic. We are challenged in our attitudes toward the sex workers. Society is SO judgmental and SO lacking in compassion for these teens and women. I have never met a child who wants to grow up and be a sex worker/slave. Each of these children and women have a personal story--a scary and heart-breaking story that led to their enslavement. Yet society and our legal system are often harsh on them and do not look below the surface of their circumstances. Imagine having the threat of violence and even death as your daily shadow!

So maybe this Lent we can invite others to examine their attitudes about females as sex objects to be used for selfish gratification-pornography, rape, sex trafficking...

What efforts are underway to protect women and children from the abuse and to bring justice to the perpetrators? Look how the military is finding the sexual abuse of women often not taken seriously and the perpetrators are not being held accountable. I am grateful this has come forward as such a scandal and that there is a collective desire to have the military change.

I think of all these women who have no one to turn to in their ongoing suffering. How can we stand with them? How can we bring awareness to the plight of teens and women sold for sex? I have heard quoted many times the statistic that 1 in 3 females have been sexually abused. If this is the case, or even close to it, than those attitudes of females as sexual objects are very close to home.

This Lent, let us fast from being judgmental, pray for those enslaved in sex trafficking and seek freedom and justice for all women and children who are being used as sexual objects.

Post contributed by Sister Denise LaRock, D.C.