Open Your Eyes Defining Sex Trafficking in Rural PA

for the past

almost 20 years i have been

an educator a trainer an advocate

and a counselor

the agency that i work for provides

services to victims and survivors of

domestic violence sexual assault

and all other serious crimes hmm

all other serious crimes what exactly

does that

mean well armed robberies carjackings

muggings stalking and human trafficking

now when i was first approached to be an

educator for

human trafficking i’ve been a

pretty perceptive person all my life and

i felt that

if that was going on in my community in

my hometown

i would have seen signs of that by now

so i always start out

all my talks with the quote from d h

lawrence that says

what the eye doesn’t see and the mind

doesn’t know doesn’t exist

and what that means is i didn’t see it

i didn’t know it existed there were no

signs around me

so therefore i thought it wasn’t an

issue

but i also realized that i had a very

wrong

definition of what human trafficking was

so i’ve seen the movies i’ve seen the tv

shows

just like all of you have probably seen

taken taken

one taken two taken again still

taken matter of fact on netflix i think

you can be taken weekly

but all joking aside that’s

not what the definition is that’s not

what’s happening in our hometown

we don’t have a father like liam neeson

who is traveling continents to bring his

loved ones back home

what i’m going to talk about today is

human trafficking of minors

that are happening right here in our

community that are the throwaway kids

they’re the forgotten kids they’re the

ones that nobody goes looking for

and nobody cares to venture out for

human trafficking by definition just so

we’re clear

is modern day slavery it’s

the exchange of a sex act

for an item of value usually one person

selling another person like a commodity

and that doesn’t have to be

cash it doesn’t have to be money it can

be food it can be shelter

it can be clothing it can be anything

that has

any assigned value to it whatsoever

it’s an act by a means for

purpose so all of these things you see

on the slide behind me

the act transports facilitates

harbors any of those where

the minor victim or any victim

is being coerced forced or through fraud

tricked in to the life

that has been very misleading to them

for the means which is

whatever it takes for a trafficker to

trick

a victim into this situation and the

purpose

is ultimately to sell that victim for

sex

who is trafficked i want to give you all

the who what where whens and whys

of all this and i want to be able to

prove to you that this is happening in

our hometowns in our communities and in

our backyards

so it can happen to anyone what my

conversation is about with you is that

this happens to mostly minor girls

that’s according to statistics through

the department of justice

and other data that has been gathered

across the board so

with it happening to anyone men women

boys

girls they can be us citizens

they don’t have to be u.s citizens they

can be

vulnerable populations are mostly the

targets

and as i mentioned mostly minor girls

now we ask ourselves how do these kids

get themselves into these situations

well it’s not necessarily these kids

getting themselves into

this situation it’s these kids being

tricked

and lured into this life they’re

promised

hope and that any future is better than

the position that they’re in many

are approached by individuals claiming

to be boyfriend

material or husband material and i can

guarantee you a better education i can

guarantee you a better life i can give

you

more love and attention than what you’re

getting now

but if the grass is greener on the other

side

that’s something that we have to think

about and sometimes things are too good

to be true

and if they’re too good to be true

that’s because they are too good to be

true

but manipulating a child’s mind

if an adult is very savvy and very

clever

and knows exactly what to do and what to

say they’re able

to do that the mind of a child

is easily manipulated

my first encounter with a victim of

human trafficking in my

own area was several years back

when we as individuals that work

in our agency go on an on-call rotation

and i happened to answer the phone on

one particular day

having the phone for the weekend and a

young girl

on the other end was explaining to me

her situation where she was

what was happening to her what was

expected of her

and she just gave me the whole situation

but

she didn’t consider herself a victim

of trafficking she was telling me about

the abusive relationship that she tried

to get out

contacted a friend back in this area who

drove to harrisburg to get her

to bring her back to here anna

was the young woman that had been placed

in a motel room

less than seven miles from my home

it got real i drew blank i didn’t know

what

to do i had to kind of scramble

and i gathered my thoughts and i thought

this woman is describing to me

everything that i have learned about

victims

of domestic sex trafficking

the commercial sexual exploitation of

victims

in pennsylvania and in our community is

prevalent

she was three and a half months pregnant

she reached out to a friend who ended up

turning out to be

the bottom girl a recruiter for a

well-known trafficker

just in the next county over

he still walks around today now

she was being added to his stable

when they brought her back into this

area in

just the snap of your fingers they took

her to walmart

bought her clothing very seductive

clothing had taken pictures

of her and had posted her for sale on

backpage.com

now for those of you who don’t know what

backpage is

backpage is much like craigslist

they have a lot of different

classifications a lot of different

categories of things for sale

and in this particular case there was an

escort service section

where they were selling minor kids for

sale

now when the federal government reached

out to craigslist and told them

that they were also selling kids for

sale craigslist immediately shut that

portion down

but backpage because of the revenue this

was generating did not

polarisproject.org operates the national

human trafficking hotline

and as you see here what i’ve singled

out

is the commonwealth of pennsylvania and

if you look at common

the commonwealth of pennsylvania you

will see all the hot spots

that the signals indicate where there

has been suspected or reported cases

of trafficking mostly of minors

when you look through there

you will see the line that is supposed

to go

up through the center lining aligning

with route 15

is the number one corridor in our

geographic area for transporting victims

of trafficking now we all know our

geographic location right here today

and route 15 is not that far from us

these victims are transported north and

south east and west

all across pennsylvania all across our

country

and they are sold for sex sometimes

bouncing from trafficker to trafficker

to trafficker

but many of them will be branded or

tattooed with their trafficker’s name

because they’re a piece of property and

that way when they want to be

or can be returned to their trafficker

people know where to take them and where

to drop them off

these victims are through force fraud

and coercion tricked as i mentioned

they’re addicted to a variety of drugs

as another means

to get them to do what they’re supposed

to do

to do what they’re expected to do and to

do what they’re being demanded

to do it’s

shocking to think that the number of

victims when we think of trafficking

we think of the victims being

transported in to

our country and although the numbers are

staggering

the numbers are only fourteen thousand

five hundred to seventeen thousand five

hundred victims are trafficked into

the u.s every year according to the

department of justice

but the victims that are trafficked

within the u.s borders

in a given year are between 100 000 to

300

000 and again mostly minor girls

the department of justice indicates that

if a child runs away from home

three or more times in a 12-month period

they have an 80 percent higher chance of

encountering a trafficker

and being trafficked this is one

kid too many one kid too many that’s out

on the street

that are being forced into this life

being threatened

being beaten being told that yeah you

can leave

but your ten-year-old sister will take

your place they’re embarrassed by the

fact that they’re doing what they’re

doing

they’re being blackmailed they’re being

horribly horribly

treated and scared and terrified to

death

to leave their trafficker now some

people have said why don’t you just

leave

why don’t they just walk away because

they’re scared fear of the known

for these individuals beats out fear of

the unknown

they know what to expect they know

what’s happening to them

and they know that and they fear that

but getting out on their own pointing

the finger at their trafficker

is in some cases a death sentence for

these victims

the number of minors that are trafficked

throughout

the united states could fill 1 300

school buses

that’s how many kids are being

trafficked and sold for sex

i want you to take a look at the

pictures behind me just quickly what

you’re going to see

is the mug shots from a denver police

officer

who had these individuals arrested

this is the same one this one girl was

arrested for prostitution

and every time she was arrested for

prostitution they took a mug shot over

and you can see the progression from

each mug shot

as how to identify the types the abuse

that this victim suffered and the

addiction

the drug use that this victim

traffickers will use a drug

as well here this will help you get

through this

this will help you do what you’re

supposed to do or

they will withhold the drug and say well

if you don’t do what you’re supposed to

do

then you don’t get this drug and to an

addict

withholding a drug is just as bad as

giving them the drug in the first place

who are the traffickers can be anybody

can be the guy next door it can be the

neighbor it can be the businessman

see my superhero capes are in three

sizes

the first one was let’s go talk to the

victims

tell the victims this isn’t how you have

to live your life there’s services

there’s agencies there’s people out

there that can help you

well these victims are terrified they’re

not going to leave they’re scared to

death to point the finger or testify

against their trafficker

and so we’re kind of at a loss

my next one was these are pimps

these are sometimes boyfriends these are

sometimes parents

step parents foster parents grandparents

the list goes on of those who decided

that getting out of poverty

was the way to do it was to sell

a family member and cash in on all this

the profit because it looks so good

is a hundred and fifty billion dollars

a year that’s an income

that is generated across the u s for

trafficking

so the money is the motivation

traffickers are one step ahead of the

law they don’t have to follow the law

now police do in order to make an arrest

but traffickers know

how to avoid all that and they usually

have the victim end up

holding the cash holding

the phone that made the appointments

everything

these victims of trafficking are

helpless they feel hopeless

they feel that there’s nothing more in

their life for them than this

so when we couldn’t reach the victim and

we couldn’t reach

the the trafficker we decided to

investigate a little bit and through

documentation of arrests and criminal

charges

we found out that the profile of a sex

buyer who drives

the organization and the

the demand for trafficking is a white

male works full-time

educated married makes a pretty good

income between the ages the first

category was 30 to 39

and the next was 40 to 49.

one of the things we need to understand

is these kids

they are not for sale they shouldn’t be

for sale

when we see something when we suspect

something we need to report it

and we need to make sure that we’re

doing everything we can to help these

kids

not get tricked into this life remember

that

i am not for sale have conversations

bring awareness to this issue make a

difference make a change

thank you