Victims Don’t Know They’re Victims
Human trafficking victims, like child abuse victims, live in a deceptively normalized state.
Victims Can Be Anyone
If you grew up in a home with one parent with an explosive temper and the other remained submissive, you wouldn’t know that the violence you experienced was abnormal. Nightly berating and even beatings would be a regular part of life. How could you know any different, unless someone told you. Maybe, if you spend a night at a sleepover at a home without broken furniture, all the shades drawn, somber, sullen faces and violence, you might notice a difference. You still might not, the reprieve would be short and you’d likely be busy.
The trickiest part of human trafficking is the invisibility of it. Let’s say you are from Asia, you speak mandarin. Your sister met a woman who acts like her best friend, bringing gifts and giving advice. She seems to adore her, so you join them on a few outings. You have fun and she talks about how wealthy she was in America. She tells you she has a business there. Before you realize it, you and your sister are making plans to go with her. Once here, she hands you over to another woman who takes your passports and all of your belongings, then separates you from your sister and you are forced to engage in sex acts in a brothel.
With no one else speaking your dialect and threats that your sister will be hurt, you cannot tell anyone your plight. It wouldn’t take long for the shame of being tricked and the fear for your life and that of your sister to ensure you never speak of it, even if you get out.
Anyone
Perhaps, a cheerleader and academic superstar is in a car accident. The pain is overwhelming and she starts to seek ways of dealing with it, outside of a doctor’s care. They simply won’t help her get relief, so she turns to street drugs. She is able to stay in school and continue with her studies, even cheering at games. But it means she has to exchange sex acts for the drugs. She is 16. She is a domestic child sex trafficking victim and you would never know it.
He seems like a nice guy. He is in poor health, but mostly pleasant. The whole crew has been working on your neighbor’s property for some time. There is no reason to think that they aren’t being paid or that they live in a trailer without running water. Landscaping and other manual labor jobs are so regulated right? Without asking questions, it could be that he lost his home in a fire and in his despair he fell into a depression and has been taken advantage of ever since.
Maybe the middle-aged woman cleaning the hotel room next door is a legitimate employee, but maybe not. Or the nurses aid at the nursing home where your great uncle Joe lives. Exploitation can happen to virtually anyone for a myriad of reasons. Domestic or foreign, old or young, risk factors can be red flags, but the definition has distinct parameters.
How to Tell Victims
Screening people for exploitation is an evolving topic. Just how wording should be and exactly what and how to ask is really a situational art. There are a bunch of screening tools from paper questionnaires to online surveys and of course, those questions asked by healthcare or law enforcement. We can find them, sometimes. As I said, some people will never speak of it, even if they know they were victimized.
Dealing with victims of crime is a whole discussion and many courses from The Office for Victims of Crime and others provide those who would be advocates the skills and legal information needed for assisting people in that situation.
Our Roles
Our roles vary. As people, we can keep our eyes open to help our fellow human beings. See something, say something.
Legally, responsibility for reporting abuse depends on where in the US we live. Some professions are mandatory reporters, some are voluntary reporters.
The first thing to do is become aware. January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month. Watch the videos here for the first 12 days of January and you will have a pretty good awareness. If you think they are valuable, share with others, especially those working with pregnancy centers, for whom the course was created.