BOOK REVIEW OF ‘RENTING LACY: A STORY OF AMERICA’S PROSTITUTED CHILDREN’

 “They are America’s children. They’re our neighbors. They’re our children’s classmates. They’re in our very homes. They are our children. We must save them.”

— Renting Lacy: A Story of America's Prostituted Children by Linda Smith, Cindy Coloma

I’ve heard it said that in order to reach a reader’s heart one must use story. In Renting Lacy A Story of America’s Prostituted Children Congresswoman Linda Smith informs the reader with the facts of sex trafficking while leading him through the gruesome lives of several victims. One she names “Lacy.”

Her compassion for the victims of this business is apparent and her passion to help them becomes clear as she states all that her organization Shared Hope International does to stop it. 

The book includes the laws made to help protect the children sometimes as young as 11 or 12 from becoming enslaved in this business. To helping decriminalize the victim when they are found by law enforcement. 

A good deal of the misidentification comes from people who think that these young girls and boys deserve or want to be abused and used as sex slaves. When the truth is that they are targeted and picked off the street by men who hope to make a profit. 

In the glossary Ms. Smith provides the terms used in trafficking. The ‘ trafficker’ or ‘pimp’ is given to the person looking to sell girls. They look for kids from broken homes, abusive families or even online. They lure these adolescent children with gifts, promises to fulfill their dreams or even take them to abuse them and drug them repeatedly. 

Part of the process they use to keep them dependent is similar to a hostage situation where they break them down through intervals of “love” and abuse. Until the child can no longer go back home or stop doing what her handler wants her to do. These kids learn at an early age to do what they are told to do through abuse and the pattern continues when they are “groomed” by their pimp. 

In the book, Ms. Smith states “The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that each year at least 100,000 children are the human products meeting the demand of the sex trafficking industry in the U.S. alone. Around the world, more than one million children are subjected to human trafficking for sex or porn. The industry is estimated to bring in $ 9.5 billion annually.”

The statistics are too high for you and I to turn our attention away from this very real problem in our country. 

What can we do to help?

Ms. Smith outlines specific directives she and her organization are using to help eradicate sex slavery in our country today. She offers hope for the reader as we see her “victims” find help in various agencies and a way back to living healthy productive safe lives away from their abductors. 

This book for purposes of alerting the reader to the dangers of trafficking is not intended for a young person. Strong language and sexual terminology are used throughout the book. 

It’s a difficult book to read but necessary. 

If you need help contact Shared Hope International~

“Hotline number: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children—

800-843-5678

Resource: Shared Hope International—1-866-HER-LIFE (1-866-437-5433) www.sharedhope.org”