A friend on Facebook sent me the following message. I edited it to make sentences into sentences and correct spelling mistakes.
It’s related to my post a few days ago about government officials referring to voluntary prostitution as “trafficking.”
I saw your EconLog post about sex trafficking. I was going to post this story as a comment but decided it was too long. Anyway, I thought you might like to hear it.
A few years ago a female co-worker from Raleigh told us over lunch that she was almost kidnapped by sex traffickers at the Target in Raleigh. Surprised, we asked what happened. He said a man came up to him and commented on his t-shirt. That was it. He was young and attractive and our company was known for our smart t-shirts. I suggested that he was just trying to start a conversation. He emphasized that he had seen the news of many people being arrested for sex trafficking at that Target. So, in his opinion, he must have been the kidnapper. When I got back to my desk I googled the Raleigh Targets sex trafficking cases. He was right: there were at least 4 or 5 high-profile cases. But when I read more than a dozen paragraphs, I finally found that they were all common fornication. There was no human trafficking and no kidnappers. The police dress it up as human trafficking because they get more headlines and federal dollars fighting non-existent trafficking, and the media goes along with it for clicks. Because of this, at least one woman in Raleigh was afraid to go to Target for fear of being kidnapped. (italics added)
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