January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month. Human trafficking is dangerous and growing crime worldwide.

According to dosomething.org,“Human trafficking is the third largest international crime industry (behind illegal drugs and arms trafficking). It reportedly generates a profit of $32 billion every year. Of that number, $15.5 billion is made in industrialized countries.”

Although the exact numbers are not possible to obtain, it is estimated that 27 million people, largely women and children, are victims of human trafficking. Human trafficking yields high profit payouts to traffickers because they can resell the same person repeatedly.

Before we go too much farther, let’s define human trafficking. Human trafficking is the buying, selling, and transporting of humans for either forced labor or sexual exploitation. Victims are brought into trafficking rings through force, fraud, or coercion. Force involves beatings, rape, gang rape, and confinement. The period of time spent breaking the victim’s will is known as seasoning. The seasoning process is usually used for girls that are sexually exploited in order to keep them in submission. Fraud is when a trafficker promises a job or opportunity and steals the victim’s freedom instead. It could look like a decent job with high wages or promised fame from a modeling career, but the reality is the legal documents being stolen, and the victim being forced into trafficking rings. Coercion revolves around threats and abuse or lies about the legal system. Victims of human trafficking are either sent into forced labor, domestic servitude, or the sex industry which includes prostitution or pornography. All rings of human trafficking usually involve physical abuse. In all cases, victims freedom and rights are taken, and they are described as modern day slaves.

All victims of human trafficking suffer from terrible ‘living conditions’, physical beatings, emotional abuse, fear, hunger, sleep deprivation, disorientation, and lack of hygiene products and medical attention. Children and elderly people maybe working 16 plus hours a day in dangerous conditions while young women may be forced to have 30 to 40 sexual partners a day while in captivity. Traffickers often use drugs to disorient their victims, however, an effective way to ‘break’ a victim’s will to escape is physical beatings.

In the US, forced labor might be in restaurants or agricultural settings. A victim’s legal documentation is held by the trafficker so the victim can’t escape. The victim will not be paid or paid so little that they remain “in debt” to the trafficker. Victims of sex trafficking are often chained to beds in hotels or secure houses and manned by traffickers with little hope of being found.

Who is most at risk for being trafficked? Children are exceptionally vulnerable to traffickers. One reason is because of their naivety, and another reason is because many buyers are looking for juveniles. In the US, children that have been in the foster care system are highly vulnerable to traffickers. Women are the second most vulnerable. Primarily women and children are trafficked for the sex industry, and boys or males are trafficked for labor.

Why should we be concerned? Trafficking is not a third world country issue. It’s happening here in the US, right in our back yard, so we need to be aware. “ Between 2007 and June 30, 2017, there have been a total of 869 human trafficking victims in Kentucky. “ taken from brscia.edu

Traffickers might lure victims differently in the US as opposed to more remote countries. In less developed countries, trafficking might mirror kidnappings more or families selling other family members to help reach financial stability. Whereas traffickers in the US will primarily use the internet and “groomed” or “seasoned” girls from the ring to lure in new victims.

We ask, how can these terrible things happen, and how can people do this? The answer is seems to point to money. A quick Google search showed money is the second thing people are most desperate to gain(the first being happiness). Selling and reselling people yields very high profits for traffickers. It seems too terrible to think that this actually happens, but it is a reality that millions of victims are living every day.

How can you identify a victim of human trafficking? A victim: will not go places alone , lives with an employer, has rehearsed answers, shows signs of depression/ fear/ anxiety/ submissiveness, has marks from physical abuse, seems confused, has no access to his/her own money, no reference of time, or seems generally disoriented. There are more signs, but paying attention to people and seeing if their stories make sense will go a long way. if you suspect someone is a victim of human trafficking call 911 to inform local police and call the National Human Trafficking Hotline: (888) 373-7888. Here, Judith Cooley, from WCC, reminds us that we can’t end a worldwide crime industry alone, but we can make a difference working together, because it happens here.

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Judith Cooley