Vulnerable Women and Children

It is in man’s nature to abuse those weaker than them. This is an ugly truth, but it is still the truth. There are policies and other protective initiatives in place on different levels of society. However, women and children still suffer at the hands of others. Child labor is an especially atrocious form of abuse that is rampant all over the world.

Poverty is the main driving force behind child labor. Regardless of the laws that prohibit the despicable crime of forcing children to do the things no child should even witness, the problem still exists. The atrocities the young may be forced to commit vary greatly, from slavery to drug trafficking, to sexual exploitation. Neither of those things should ever be experienced by a human being, let alone a child. This is why those who are caught committing this awful crime deserve no mercy. However, how come that these people have not yet been stopped? The answer is simple, it is too difficult to catch them as they are not being reported and know how to hide their dirty ways.

The abused children themselves are often incapable of seeking help. They are either locked up or in other ways restricted from contacting the outside world. As they are also deprived of proper education, they simply do not know how to escape. In case they have been trapped from an early age, they may not even understand that they should be looking for a way out. This is another tragedy born of the despicable act of enslaving a child. The poor abused souls learn to accept their predicament as a norm in order to cope. Without ever being given an alternative, they come to recognize their abusers as the higher authority and often believe that everyone else is treated the same. Those who can contact the outside world mostly believe themselves to be flawed and responsible for the abuse. Thus, they accept it as a given and do not even try to see the justice done, as in their fractured minds they are the ones receiving justice. Unfortunately, these people struggle with integrating in society even after they are freed from the abuse and require an extensive course of therapy to undo at least a part of the damage.

There are many policies that should protect women and children from abuse. There are also some monitoring systems in place. However, it is obvious that both need to be improved and refined in order to be more effective, as in many cases the victims of the abuse are incapable of seeking help themselves.