Most large cities house populations of child prostitutes; kept there under the control of pimps to satisfy increasing demand for their sexual services. Groups of these children travel to venues - large sports events for example - as child prostitution road-shows, again in response to demand for them.

These children come from neighbourhoods like yours - runaways, children and young teens kidnapped from the street or grabbed while on holiday, chatted up on-line, answering an ad for a job - who are rarely, if ever,  seen again.

Befriended, romanced, beaten and abused by their pimp they learn to rely on him (or her) to survive. And survival is what this sexual slavery is all about, as the pimps have the power of life, death or trade over them. They force the child to work whenever and wherever they please.

The demand for sex with children is filled in cities all over the world; in Europe, Canada, the U.S. Australia, Asia, India - everywhere. What we may have thought was a horror endured in far-off places, survives and thrives right down the street from where we live. What's more disturbing is how easy it is that these lost children could be our own.

Make no mistake, it's very real; and it's right here.

• 600,000 – 800,000 people are bought and sold across international borders each year; 50% are children, most are female. The majority of these victims are forced into the commercial sex trade. – U.S. Department of State, 2004, Trafficking in Persons Report, Washington, D.C.

• An estimated 2.5 million children, the majority of them girls, are sexually exploited in the multibillion dollar commercial sex industry – UNICEF

• 300,000 children in the U.S. are at risk every year for commercial sexual exploitation. - U.S. Department of Justice

• According to ECPAT, about 100,000 children are forced into child prostitution in Taiwan.  Venezuela has around 40,000 underage prostitutes; there are approximately 25,000 prostitutes aged 12 to 17 in the Dominican Republic; Peru has about a half million child prostitutes, another 500,000 child prostitutes are in Brazil; Canada has 200,000 child prostitutes. In South Africa, there are 40,000 child prostitutes.

• Investigators and researchers estimate the average predator in the U.S. can make more than $200,000 a year off one young girl. – NBC Report by Teri Williams