Trafficked: What Abusers Look For
Marie: There are more sex trafficking points of sale than there are Starbucks in America, so says the Children’s Assessment Center https://cachouston.org/child-sex-trafficking/
Do you know what to do if you spot someone who is being trafficked? Will you notice?
The most likely places are hotels and motels, airports and bus stations, rail companies, construction sites, and strip clubs. However, there are also many virtual places that can be dangerous, like Craig’s List, driving services, and dating websites.
Traffickers can be from any demographic. They can be individuals, groups, street gangs and organized crime, businesses, or contractors.
Will You Notice?
They’ll use psychological intimidation, manipulation, starvation, rape, beating, confinement, threats, forced drug use, and the shame from these acts to keep the sexually exploited person under control.
We reached out to The Bread of Life https://breadoflifeinc.org/ Their mission is: Providing love, hope, dignity and belonging to Houston’s underserved communities. Through them we were introduced to Shani Bacy, LMSW Director of Strategic Programs www.thelanding.org. We were fortunate to have an interview with Shani and ask some questions.
The Landing in Houston is a place that’s a touchstone for those who have been trafficked. In our interview with Shani Bacy, managing director of The Landing, we learned that getting out of a trafficked life is a long-term process, and The Landing takes a holistic approach. People who have been trafficked can slip, and fall prey to it again, be pulled back in. The Landing is just the place where they can check in, no matter where they are along their journey. Putting a life back together is serious business.
The federal TVPA(Trafficking Victims Protection Act) provides the tools to combat trafficking in persons both worldwide and domestically..
It defines the activities of trafficking:
“This can include kidnapping, battering, kicking, pushing, denial of food or water, denial of medical care, forced use of drugs or denial of drugs once a victim is addicted, forced to lie to friends and family about their whereabouts, being held in locked rooms or bound.”
Janet: The USC School of Social Work, in an article, August 2018, lays out 7 Facts You Didn’t Know about Human Trafficking. They start the article with this statement:
“Human trafficking, as defined by the United nations, is the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, my means of the threat of use of force or coercion…for the purpose of exploitation.”
How does a person get out of that kind of situation? How are people rescued?
We didn’t know the right questions to ask, and we wanted to get up to speed.
Shani outlined how traffickers use several coercive strategies to exploit victims in our community, under our distracted eyes.
Coercion: Do this just once so we can pay rent. If you want this, you need to do that.
Grooming: Want to go to a party? You should model. I can hook you up with a photographer.
Generational: Children of those trafficked are used by the abuser as new victims.
Physical force: Intimidate by harming as an example to others to keep them in line.
Drugs: Weaken and control or the help deal with the pain.
Fraud: Promise of work or possessions, money for families back home.
Reading this list it’s clear that people trafficked are owned and have monetary value, until they don’t. Getting out is dangerous, complex, and hopeless. The word rescue is not a word the landing uses yet it’s the first thing most people think. I did.
As Marie pointed out, https://thelanding.org/ is a multidimensional network set up to take the call and connect the dots of finances, records, housing, counseling. Victims can drop into a safe place where trust is built, minute by minute.
In an article titled Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking, May 24, 2018 (https://hawcdv.org/author/libertina/ ) Anna Libertin writes:
“The force and manipulation used by abusers and traffickers, in addition to the love and trust victims often give traffickers and abusers, feed off of media misconceptions about gendered human nature, including an emphasis on sex, money, and violence.”
Anne continues, with a majority of human trafficking and domestic violence victims being women, the tactics and need to exert control over a victim’s body connects directly to a larger societal issue of promoting violence among men and passivity among women.
Despite the individual recognition these two separate issues require, recognizing the overlap between human trafficking and abuse, and the overwhelming prevalence of each of these issues in today’s society, give us a better understanding of complex patterns of abuse and call us to work daily to advocate for present and future victims of all types of abuse.”
What can we do? Educate ourselves, be aware, volunteer, stay awake and outraged.
Here is your custom tool kit!
Keep this number in your phone: 888 7373 888. This is the number to call to make someone aware. 888 7373 888. Knowledge is power.
Truckers Against Trafficking https://education.truckersagainsttrafficking.org/
Children’s Assessment Center https://cachouston.org/child-sex-trafficking/
United Against Human Trafficking https://uaht.org/
RedM https://www.joinredm.com/new-page
American Trucking Association https://www.trucking.org/combating-human-trafficking
ATA Training https://education.truckersagainsttrafficking.org/
Love 146 https://love146.org/
The Landing https://thelanding.org/
Margaret Kidd, Program Director Supply Chain & Logistics Technology, University of Houston said,
“Houston is ground zero in our state for human trafficking based on our geographic proximity to the border with Mexico, diverse population where victims blend in and transportation hub for commerce.”