C’mon, a quick word association game. I say slavery. You say . . . what? Civil War? Emancipation Proclamation?

Now, I tell you that child slavery is a modern-day epidemic. What region of the world comes to mind? Somewhere in the Third World?

The horrible truth, documented in former Southwest Washington Congresswoman Linda Smith’s book, Renting Lacy, is that child slavery is epidemic in America as well.

According to the Justice Department, between 100,000 and 300,000 American children, many of them pre-teens, are prostituted each year.

Read that sentence again.

Some kids are forcibly kidnapped and physically coerced–beaten, gang raped, sodomized. Others are psychologically manipulated–carefully brainwashed–into this life.

And the demand for children is increasing. 

Smith is known in these parts as a former Washington State legislator and two-term Congresswoman. Less well-known is the Vancouver, Washington resident’s path after losing to Senator Patty Murray in 1998.

Later that year, after a trip to Mumbai ,India—where, she says, she was shocked to see women and girls in forced prostitution—Smith founded Shared Hope International, a Vancouver-based NGO, to fight the sex trafficking of women and children.

Shared Hope’s initial focus was on South Asia. But years of undercover investigations and research made clear the global nature of the problem.

Renting Lacy follows the “stable” of one mid-sized Las Vegas pimp, Bobby Bad. The story focuses on 17-year-old Lacy, his “bottom ho” (head prostitute, who supervises the others), and the newest girl, 12-year-old Star–true stories, Smith says, with the names changed to protect the child victims involved.

We see Star’s recruitment, “seasoning” and training. We stand by as she is brutalized by seven or eight adult men, while others film the “date” for later sale. We get to know the “good family men” who rent her body, and Lacy’s, by the hour.

We meet cops, prosecutors and judges who are trying to help these young “ladies of the night”–and others convinced that simply lowering the age of consent will solve the problem.

And we watch Star’s bewildered and heartbroken grandmother back in Nebraska looking, ineffectually, for Cassie, as Star was known before Bobby repackaged her for sale.

Interwoven with the story are sections of commentary stuffed with ugly data about the child sex trade. More people, for instance, are enslaved in the world today (at least 27 million) than ever before in history. And over a million of those are children as young as 11, trafficked for sex and/or porn, and raking in an estimated $9.5 billion a year for their masters.

The average age of entry into prostitution in America is 12-14.  Traffickers target homeless shelters, regions hit by natural disasters, and girls who’ve just had a fight with their parents, in their search for the endless supply of victims needed to feed the growing demand for children.

Smith excerpts pimp Mickey Royal’s chilling 1998 book, The Pimp Game: An Instructional Manual, which teaches, Royal says, the “‘intricate process of psychological destruction and emotional reconstruction’” designed to make a child or young teen physically, psychologically and financially dependent on the pimp. The goal is the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, where the victim shows loyalty and even love to her abuser.

Smith and her co-writer, novelist Cindy Coloma, relentlessly remind us that this industry, like every other, is driven by demand. And, eventually, you start running the numbers in your head: 100,000 kids working the street, each of them servicing at least half a dozen johns a night. That’s over half a million men tonight. And tomorrow night. And the night after. . . .

Just how many men are there in this country—and how many do I know—who prey on children?

And yet, though the child victims are routinely arrested and charged, the adults who use them are often never even charged, must less convicted.

Renting Lacy is a quick read, painful but riveting.

I suggest to Vancouver, Washington, Mayor Tim Leavitt that he institute an annual “common read” for the City of Vancouver, and that he begin with a locally grown book: Renting Lacy.