Human Trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery. Victims of human trafficking are subjected to force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor.
Victims are young children, teenagers, men and women.
After drug dealing, human trafficking is tied with the illegal arms industry as the second largest criminal industry in the world today, and it is the fastest growing.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act 2000 (TVPA) defines "Severe forms of Trafficking in Person as:
Sex Trafficking: the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person forced to perform such an act is under of 18 years ;
Labor Trafficking, on the other hand, is defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
In both forms, the victim is an unwilling participant due to force, fraud, or coercion.
Trafficking Victims
Approximately 600,000 to 800,000 victims annually are trafficked across internationl borders worldwide, according to the US Department to State. These estimates include women, men and children. Victims are generally trafficked into the U.S. from Asia, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe. Many victims trafficked into the United States do not speak and understand English and are therefore isolated and unable to communicate with service providers, law enforcement and others who might be able to help them.
How Victims Are TraffickedMany victims of trafficking are forced to work in prostitution or sex entertainment. However, trafficking also takes place as labor exploitation, such as domestic servitude, sweatshop factories, or migrant agricultural work. Traffickers use force, fraud and coercion to compel women, men and children to engage in these activities.
Force
Force involves the use of rape, beating and confinement to control victims. Forceful violence is used especially during the early stages of victimization, known as the seasoning process, which is used to break victim's resistance to make them easier to control.
FraudFraud often involves false offers of employment. For example, women and children will reply to advertisement s promising jobs as waitresses, maids and dancers in other countries and are then forced into prostitution once they arrive at their destinations.
Coercion
Coercion involves threats of serious harm to, or physical restraint of, victims of trafficking; any scheme, plan or pattern intended to cause victims to believe that failure to perform an act would result in restraint against them; or abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.
Victims of trafficking are often subjected to debt-bondage, usually in the context of playing off transportation fee into the destination countries. Traffickers often threaten victims with injury or death or the safety of the victim's family back. Traffickers commonly take away the victims' travel documents and isolate them to make escape more difficult.
Victims often do not realize that it is illegal for traffickers to dictate how they have to pay off their debt. In many cases, the victims are trapped into a cycle of debt because they have to pay for all living expenses in addition to the inital transportation expenses. Fines for not meeting daily quotes of services or "bad" behavior are also used by some trafficking operations to increase debt.
Most trafficked victims are rarely see the money they are supposedly earning and may not even know the specific amount of their debt.
Even if the victims sense that debt-bondage is unjust, it is difficult for them to find help because of language, social, and physical barriers that keep them from obtaining assistance.
Help for Victims of Trafficiking
Prior to the enactment of the TVPA in October 2000, no comprehensive Federal law existed to protect victims of trafficking or to prosecute their traffickers. The law is compehensive in addressing the various ways of combatting trafficking, including prevention, protection and prosecution. It is intended to prevent human trafficking overseas, to increase prosecution of United States and to protect victims and provide
Federal and state assistance to certain victims. Victims of human trafficking who are not U.S.citizens are eligible for a special visa and can receive benefits and services through the TVPA to the same extent as refugees. Victims are trafficking who are U.S. citizens may already be eligible for many benefits due to their citizenship.
If you think you have come in contact with a victim of human trafficking, call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1-888-3737-888 What is the NHTRC’s National Website?
Who Can Call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center?
The NHTRC is equipped to handle calls from all regions of the United States from a wide range of callers including potential trafficking victims, community members, law enforcement agents, medical professionals, legal professionals, researchers, students, and policy-makers. Based on the past history of calls into the national hotline, we know that calls most frequently occur for the purposes of tips about potential trafficking situations, questions about human trafficking, training and technical assistance requests, emergency crisis response situations involving potential victims, and general information about how to get involved in the anti-trafficking movement.
How Does the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Respond to Calls?
The NHTRC is available to answer calls from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year. Urgent requests are processed 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Non-urgent requests are processed primarily between the hours of 9am and 9pm EST, Monday through Friday, during an extended business week. If a non-urgent request comes in after 9pm EST, on the weekend, or on a holiday, a message will be taken by the call specialist on duty, and a full-time program staff will respond to the request within one business day or, in the case of holidays, on the next business day. A chart detailing the available services of the NHTRC is available below:
Pictured above is Eric D.Graham, along with Pam Stricklalnd, the founder of the Eastern North Carolina Stop Human Trafficking Now and Katherine Bass during a recent workshop designed to fight Human Trafficking on September 7th 2011 held at the Ed Emory Auditorium in Kenansville, North Carolina. The event was sponsored by the Duplin County Library System, the Duplin County Sheriff's Office, and the Duplin County Cooperative Extension.
