businessinsider.com
Abby Rogers

Wikipedia

Long thought to be a problem only in America’s poorest cities or the world’s most impoverished nations, human trafficking is now making a move toward the upper fringes of society.

During a speech Thursday at the University of Mississippi School of Law, federal prosecutors said sex trafficking, both in terms of victims and suspects, has spread to wealthy suburbs as well as small rural towns, The Commercial Appeal reported.

“We have an 18-year-old white trafficker who didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds, but she was beating the crap out of the victims and threatening to kill them,” assistant U.S. attorney in Memphis Jonathan Skrmetti told students.

Between 2008 and 2010, 2,515 alleged incidents of human trafficking were reported in the U.S., 82 percent of which involved claims of sex trafficking, according to Northeastern University.

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