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CST Handout

Catholic Social Teaching and the Problem of Sex Trafficking Women and Children

According to CST #1 the life of a human person is considered sacred and is the starting point of a moral vision for our society. When women and children are tricked into sex slavery, their dignity is taking away from them. Like the use of the death penalty, sex trafficking is threatening the value of human life. Some parents, for money, sell their own children to brothels all around the world. If sex trafficking continues, perhaps the life and dignity of the human person will be in jeopardy.


According to CST #2 “The wage paid to the worker must be sufficient for the worker and the worker’s family” (CST 42). The sex trafficking industry does not pay wages anywhere near sufficient enough to support a single person, let alone a family. Also, the workers typically fall into a sex debt with there “owners” making it near impossible to ever get out of the industry.

Photo Links:



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CST #3 Rights and Responsibilities

CST #3 involves us citizens having both rights and responsibilities. These are taken away from victims involved in sex trafficking. The young children lose their right to grow up and b e able to do what they want to do, by being sold from their own family into a brothel where one is forced to work in order to pay off his/her “debt.” They must continue to sell their bodies for this “debt” that will never be paid off. The rights that children have are always affected when a young child is working for a pimp.



CST #4 Option for the Poor and Vulnerable:
Sex Trafficking is an act which targets the poor and vulnerable as the working force of the industry. Traffickers take advantage of there vulnerability by giving women “job opportunities” and tricking them into the underground market of sex. The poor and vulnerable should have a fundamental option which gives them a better living and working environment, “It is distressing to see great masses of workers throughout the world who do not receive a just remuneration in wages for their work” (CST 60). The poor and vulnerable in foreign countries where sex trafficking thrives deserve this basic human option to live fairly and happily.


CST #5 The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers:
The sex trafficking industry is one where the workers within are treated so poorly that they are practically stripped of there basic human rights and forced to give up their own body for work. “Workers are not to be treated as slaves. Justice demands that workers always be treated with human dignity” (CST 79). Those who run the underground sex trade are running an underground sex slave market. Women and children are forced into the industry and trapped from getting out by there employers.




CST #6 Solidarity
CST #6 explains how each person must respect one another. It states that for the go od of all, human society must have people invested with authority. This involves my social justice project because in some sex trafficking cases, the authorities, or police, will be involved with the illegal business. This hurts human society and goes against what this CST is teaching us.



CST #7 Care for God's Creation
CST #7 pertains to the logic of the Earth’s Environment. This CST is difficult to relate to my social justice project because they are both very different topics. As the CST involves communities working together to reverse the harm that has been done to God’s creations. The sex trafficking of women and children doesn’t necessarily impact the environment.


Photo Links:

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http://www.onenationundergod.org/images/poor_large.jpg

http://butnowyouknow.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/anarcho-capitalist-worker.jpg

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