Editors' Note: This special Spring/Summer edition of The AMBER Advocate contains extensive coverage of the Trafficking in Persons Symposium held April 10-13, 2012, in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Department of Justice's AMBER Alert Training & Technical Assistance Program (AATTAP) conducted the symposium, which brought together more than 100 subject matter experts from a variety of disciplines including law enforcement, medical and legal representatives, social services, non-government organizations, educators, faith-based organizations and researchers to gather valuable insights and lessons surrounding the topic of trafficking. The symposium included collaboration from Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Texas at El Paso, and Southern Methodist University.
Change in Perspective
A 15-year-old Phoenix girl was invited on MySpace to meet up with a friend she knew from school. When she showed up to see her friend, four men grabbed her, wrapped her in duct tape, and took her to an apartment where they gang-raped her.
For the next 43 days, the men forced the girl to live in a dog cage and trafficked her. The men fed her dog biscuits and threatened to kill her every day. No AMBER Alert was issued. Even though the girl was a model student and did not have a history of problems, the police and parents thought she had run away. The incident happened in 2005 and at that time detectives thought any girl who offered sex for money had made a lifestyle choice.
“We did not understand that a prostitute is not a criminal, rather a prostitute is a trafficking victim,” said Phoenix Police Lieutenant James Gallagher. “We thought we knew everything, and we would solve everything. Our mind set changed when we found a girl in a dog crate.”
The Trafficking in Persons Symposium included horrifying stories of children who were abducted and forced into slavery. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), which is a component of U.S. Department of Justice, hosted the symposium.
“We realized it was important to focus on human trafficking because the AMBER Alert did not address the problems we were seeing with endangered, runaway, and thrownaway children,” said Phil Keith, AMBER Alert Training & Technical Assistance Program Director. “It is difficult to separate child abductions from human trafficking because the research shows a strong connection between endangered and abducted children and trafficking.”
Keith said lessons learned from developing the AMBER Alert program could inform the development of a national response to human trafficking. Likewise, learning more about human trafficking will give AMBER Alert partners more insight into their response to child abductions.
The Numbers
Estimating the number of people trafficked into or out of the United States is inherently difficult because of the secretive nature of sex and labor trafficking. Using different methodologies, populations (adults versus children), units of analysis (states, counties, continents), researchers have produced wildly disparate estimates of the problem. Lacking consistency, estimates for trafficking within the United States range from 2 million to 14,000 annually; and international figures reach as high as 27 million victims per year.
Without methodologically sound techniques for determining the number of trafficking victims, some studies have turned to at-risk populations, a logical approach given the link between at-risk youth and adults, and exploitation. For instance, the second National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Thrownaway Children (NISMART-2) published by OJJDP in 2002 estimated that 1,315,600 children were missing from their caretakers for at least an hour in 1999. The annual total includes nearly 800,000 runaway, thrownaway, injured or endangered children and 150,200 child abductions.
Taking even the lowest estimate of human trafficking within the United States reveals that more than 10,000 people face labor or sexual exploitation each year in this country. Turning to at-risk populations reveals an even larger issue with at least 100,000 in danger of sexual or forced labor situations.
People who work with human trafficking agree that even one case of a child being forced to work as a sex slave, or forced to work in agricultural fields for pennies is reason enough to take this issue seriously.
A Survivor's Story
Holly Smith was 14 years old when an older man approached her at a mall. After that, he started calling her frequently and buying her gifts. “He talked to me like an adult, which was important to me,” said Smith. “Most boys and girls were sarcastic, and I did not feel like I was being heard.”
The man told her they could run away to Hollywood so she could be a songwriter or a model. Smith said running away seemed like a good idea because she had been abused as a child and had a bad relationship with her parents.
Smith said she knew something was wrong when the man took her to a hotel and raped her to “test his goods.” He then told her about the rules regarding having sex with men for money. After weeks as a domestic minor sex trafficking victim a police officer approached her and asked if she was underage.
“I asked ‘What if I was not 18?’” said Smith. “The officer arrested me, searched me, and threatened me with juvenile detention and that I would get beat up. My family members did not understand what happened to me.” She said the officer's treatment convinced her that she could not trust law enforcement.
Eventually, Smith received the help she needed and now works as a microbiologist. She speaks to audiences across the nation to convince people to treat girls like her as a trafficking victim instead of a child prostitute or sex worker. “My main point is: These girls are worth saving.”
A New Approach
Detectives at the Dallas Police Department found they started making a dent against human trafficking when they began treating women and girls as victims instead of prostitutes. Between 2005 and 2010, they recovered 994 high-risk runaways; 506 identified themselves as trafficking victims, and detectives had evidence that many of the others were also victims.
“It is truly not that difficult to find trafficking victims,” said Dallas Detective Cathy Delapaz. “It is important to know what to do once they are contacted. The interviewer must help the victim find services and get help. If your sole purpose is to win a case, you are doomed to fail.”
Dallas Police soon realized these victims are different than other crime victims. “Our system is set up for compliant victims,” said Dallas Police Sergeant Byron Fassett. “It is not set up for foul-mouthed, angry, mean and scared victims who will fight you tooth and nail. We need to change the system to help them.”
Fassett said most trafficking victims do not contact police and so a community-wide approach is needed to make it safe to seek help. Law enforcement must team up with juvenile probation, state and federal prosecutors, social service agencies, and non-profit groups to make a real difference.
The Dallas Police Department is now rescuing about 90 girls each year from sexual exploitation compared to about 12 girls a year when they were simply making vice arrests.
The Phoenix Police followed the Dallas model and started partnering with federal agencies and national and local organizations that could offer help to trafficking victims. The department also started targeting pimps instead of prostitutes.
“We tried to arrest our way out of the problem and had no understanding of victimization,” said Phoenix Police Sergeant George Sutherlin. “We did not focus on the pimp or john and had no partnerships with service providers. Our partnerships are now the most important resources in trafficking cases.”
Phoenix police have partnered with Arizona State University's Project Rose, a program that provides an alternative to incarceration for women charged with prostitution. The project offers services and restores dignity to victims so they will not return to prostitution. Not everyone finishes the program, but none of the women who have finished it has been re-arrested. “Arrest alternatives do work and partnerships can help save victims,” said Associate Professor Dominique Roe-Sepowitz.
Lessons for AMBER Alert Partners
When the AMBER Alert Program began to grow across the country, many believed communities would use the alert only for stereotypical child abductions. AMBER Alert partners quickly realized that family members and people who know the victim commit most abductions. They also realized that family and acquaintance abductions can be extremely dangerous for the child.
The symposium provided an eye-opening look at the alarming numbers of child abductions that occur for the sole purpose of sex trafficking. Pimps and gangs physically abduct some of the victims. Many victims are missing children or runaways who have been lured to leave their homes without knowing the full consequences. Findings from the symposium will be essential for AMBER Alert partners to develop a comprehensive child abduction response plan that can provide for the safe recovery of all victims.
Letters to the Advocate
“I am going through all of my Trafficking in Persons Symposium notes and just wanted to say thanks for inviting me. I have lots of information that will really help our program. I learned a lot during the conference and felt that it was very well done. We are now working on putting together a task force on human trafficking.” — Amy Thurston, Trafficking in Persons Program Coordinator, Asian Association of Utah Refugee and Immigrant Center
Report: Trafficking in Persons Symposium
Survivors Offer Solutions to Get Trafficked Victims Off the Streets
One of the most valuable lessons that the AMBER Alert Training & Technical Assistance Program has taught is the value of listening to victims and their families when seeking solutions to child abductions. The Trafficking in Persons Symposium brought 12 survivors of child sex trafficking to offer a real-world perspective on what will and will not work to help victims.
“We thought it was very important to have a face on this mission,” said Phil Keith, AMBER Alert Training & Technical Assistance Program Director. “When you have the face of a child, it deals with our values and our heart.”
The 12 women who now call themselves “sister survivors” offered practical ways to help human trafficking victims. “We know what it takes to bring victims into becoming survivors,” said Keisha Head. She and the other survivors provided examples of what is needed to help trafficking victims, including being careful with the language and labels used during the first contact, being prepared to provide shelter, food, education, and long-term support, considering the trauma the victim experiences, and coordinating services while using survivors to help victims.
Head said her experience with law enforcement was not positive after she was forced into trafficking. She said one police officer even gave her advice on where the “pretty girls” sell themselves. Later, she went to the police after she was raped. “The officer said, ‘You were not raped, you are a prostitute.’”
In conclusion, she said, the one word all of the survivors could relate to is slavery. “This is modern-day slavery, and this is taking place under our eyes, and we need to take a stand and stop this from happening.”
Lessons From Human Trafficking Symposium Offered Online
On May 16, nearly 400 people participated in an online training course about the connection between missing children and sex trafficking. The hour-long Webinar, “Missing to Trafficking,” identified the correlation between the unknown missing child, chronic runaway, repeat victims of sexual abuse, abducted children, and the child victimized through sex trafficking.
“Child sex trafficking victims are missing kids,” said Dallas Police Sergeant Byron Fassett. “A child on the street has the highest risk of victimization. They are often approached by a pimp and forced into trafficking.”
AMBER Alert Liaison Jim Walters offered this advice from the Trafficking in Persons Symposium when assisting victims: offer help unconditionally, learn to be culturally appropriate, provide basic needs, and use a survivor advocate to assist. “It is our responsibility to give victims control and let them take charge of their own lives,” said Walters.