OK, I admit it. I’m addicted to CNN’s live video from the courtroom. And I’m very sorry that Court TV became TruTV, because they no longer broadcast past 2:00 PM CDT. (The programming after that is nothing but reruns of “true crime” programs, and it means that California trials are no longer covered—such as the second Phil Spector trial, which is in progress now.) I’ve also been puzzled by CNN’s choice of trials to cover. At first I was repelled by the Kathleen Hilton trial and was only drawn in when I realized the judge was forcing expert witnesses to explain things clearly to the jury. That struck me as unusual.

Now CNN is covering an uninteresting trial involving the brutal murder of a gay student. I can only guess that CNN finds the victim’s lifestyle sufficiently “sensational” to draw an audience. Unfortunately, in this situation the cameras in the courtroom, it seems to me, are exploiting the victim and his family and friends.

So—I’ve begun exploring the CNN “Crime” news. Much of what I’ve found there is far more interesting, important, and troubling than the current, live trial.

For example, today I found a story about a nationwide FBI roundup of pimps and rescue of more than 50 child prostitutes. This is part of the FBI’s Innocence Lost Project and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Why don’t cable channels cover the issue of child prostitution with the same zeal they cover stories in which they believe parents have murdered their children? The parents of Madeleine McCann were tried in the press; no one could believe that a stranger might kidnap a lovely little girl. The parents of JonBenet Ramsey were tried in the press (and we all know the weird twists in that case despite hints that there was a cat burglar in Boulder who had molested another little girl in her bed and hints that child pornographers were active in the area).

I believe Americans (and especially the press) are hypocritical with regard to child exploitation. Child abuse by parents is widely condemned, but most social workers will tell you that the courts are loathe to remove an abused child from an abusive environment, because it is considered to be the ultimate violation of a family’s rights to self-determination and privacy. A psychologist told me recently that in one local case of child abuse, the court permitted an infant to remain in a home after a serious child-abuse incident; then the father in the home put the infant in a dresser drawer and closed it when the baby cried. The baby suffocated.

Where do you think child prostitutes come from? I’d be willing to bet that they come from abusive homes. When a father or stepfather or Mom’s boyfriend sexually abuses (that is, rape) a young girl, she is likely to run away and start making a living on the street. Pimps kidnap them off the street “to take care of them.” This is slavery and rape. It isn’t an issue to be handled in family court or a juvenile court. If any crime should earn the maximum penalty, this is it.

And many child prostitutes are kidnapped south of the border and then shipped into the U.S. like farm produce—maybe underneath the farm produce in trucks. (Many women are also trafficked into this county, too. Don’t kid yourself.) It’s one of the most disgusting and violent byproducts of a porous border.

This is one of the reasons that borders are necessary: the laws of a nation only apply within its borders. International law is a very nice idea, but every nation (internationally) does not have a Bill of Rights, and international law cannot protect an individual when pirates and slavers are out there.

It’s naive to think that slavery was abolished by Abraham Lincoln. Back in the late 90s, after the Bosnian conflict (which, by the way, continues to this day) I learned that the Moslem Albanian “mafia” was kidnapping women in Kosovo and selling them to men in the West, including in this country as “wives.” I spoke to a UN forensic anthropologist who was excavating mass graves, and then I wrote a short story about the issue (“At the Foot,” which was posted on Zoetrope.com and is now available in my short-story collection The Evil That Men Do. See the sidebar.)

The UN has a division devoted to human trafficking (aka slavery), the UNODC. A recent documentary, Cargo, highlights the problem and specifically child prostitution (istoptraffic.com).

Surely this is a story worthy of CNN live coverage—or Foxnews live coverage—or someone’s.