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Atlanta streets a hub for human trafficking

Atlanta's streets a hub for human trafficking On the south side of Atlanta there is a growing problem with human trafficking. (Getty Images / David McNew)

On the south side of Atlanta there is a growing problem with human trafficking.

You don't have to go very far to find the victims. They are scattered between the strip clubs, sex shops and gas stations along Fulton Industrial Boulevard.

The girls, each with their  own story, are there waiting under the watchful and threatening eye of their pimp.

With the world's busiest airport right here, Atlanta is one of the largest hubs for human trafficking in the country. Vulnerable people, often children, are sold and forced to have sex against their will.

According to the FBI, the average age that a girl is first recruited into prostitution or sex trafficking in the U.S. is 11-14 years-old.

January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month. Out of Darkness, the anti-trafficking ministry of the Atlanta Dream Center, takes to the streets weekly trying to help rescue victims of commercial sexual exploitation. The volunteers who come from all across the state hand out cards that have a 24/7  hotline phone number that the girls  can call anytime to be rescued.

Recent estimates show about a hundred adolescent females are sexually exploited each night in Georgia and nearly thirteen thousand men in our state purchase sex with a young girl in any given month.

The most recent numbers show sex trafficking in Georgia generated nearly $300 million a year.

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