Human trafficking activity, trafficking training held June 18

By Ashley McCarty

People’s Defender

Due to human trafficking activities that have occurred in the county, Coalition for a Drug-Free Adams County in partnership with Brave Choices offered Human Trafficking Training on June 18.

The training was conducted via Zoom with Beth Bullock of Brave Choices to share insight into trafficking and to make individuals cognizant of things to watch for in the community.

As Bullock shared, human trafficking is the exploitation of one person for another person’s financial gain. The victim can be exploited by means of force, fraud or coercion.

The exploitation of force could be any kind of physical restraint, violence or assault.

“It’s similar to domestic violence, but it also conditions their brains to be afraid; to make them think they can’t think for themselves, to knock them down to where they don’t feel like they have any other choice,” said Bullock.

There are many ways a person can be exploited by fraud, such as a job, relationship, or a better life.

“We have foreign nationals that are brought into our country all the time that are promised the American dream. Once they come to this country, immediately their I.D, passports, everything they own is taken from them and they are forced into working at massage parlors, brothels, maybe sold into domestic servitude to be nannies and housekeepers. They have no I.D and a language barrier — who are they going to ask for help? They are solely dependent on the person that brought them here that’s trafficking them,” said Bullock.

Another technique to lure individuals is job marketing via the internet or roadside ads.

“You’ve seen ads for modeling jobs. The signs are a lot of times on corners in the summertime offering $500/week cash. A lot of times you’ll see just signs out looking to hire for agricultural jobs or landscaping jobs. Not all of them are specifically trafficking, but that is a technique that is used to get in contact with people. Those are the kind of things that are used to fraud someone into a situation of trafficking. The most important thing to remember when we’re talking about trafficking is all creepers are not traffickers, and all traffickers are not creepers. A good majority of our victims walk away willingly with their traffickers,” said Bullock.

Coercion is performed through phsycological manipulation.

“I have yet to — in the six years that I’ve been doing this — encounter an individual who realizes that what is happening to her is trafficking. When you encounter these individuals, you never want to ask, are you being trafficked? They’re going to blow you off because they don’t know what is happening to them is trafficking. That may be odd for us, but a lot of people still don’t understand really what trafficking is and what it looks like. These girls that are wrapped up in this, wrapped up in the abuse and the mental control aren’t aware of what is happening,” said Bullock.

Currently, there are over 40 million victims of human trafficking globally. According to Bullock, approximately 25 percent are children and 75 percent are women and girls.

According to the Ohio Department of Health, Ohio has ranked as high as fifth in all states in total reported human trafficking cases with Toledo being identified as the fourth highest ranking city in the nation for recruiting victims into the illegal trade.

“It’s estimated that 1 out of 7 endangered runaways reporting to The National Center of Missing and Exploited Children are likely victims of sex trafficking. A lot of foster children who are aging out of the system and have nowhere to go sometimes just hit the streets and involve themselves in survival sex, which leads to being picked up by a trafficker,” said Bullock.

In an informational video shared by Bullock, human trafficking is a $150 billion industry; of the 40.3 million trafficked internationally, 75 percent is labor and 25 percent is sex traffic. As technology has advanced, so has the trafficking industry, which uses the internet and apps like Facebook and Instagram to target victims — not even video games go untouched.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports an 846 percent increase in reports of suspected child sex trafficking from 2010 to 2015. That is an over 800 percent increase just in those five years. The organization found this spike to be “directly correlated to the increased use of the Internet to sell children for sex.”

58,000 individuals are trafficked in the United States alone, with Ohio averaging over 1,000 adults and children.

“The average age of someone being pulled into trafficking is around 12-14-years-old. Anyone at any age can be trafficked, [however]. Labor trafficking is a very high instance in our state with agricultural trafficking. Runaway youth, vulnerable at-risk youth, foster kids, those with mental health issues — a lot of these things are overlying and overlapping in issues — so when you get someone who does have a history, this is why that person makes a good target. They are looking for someone to love them and care about them,” said Bullock.

In most cases of trafficking, victims are groomed. Grooming is building an emotional bond with someone to gain their trust.

“It can happen face-to-face or online. I’m sure we’ve seen teenagers and the like posting on social media that they hate their life, everything is horrible, their parents don’t understand them. Those are the kind of things that traffickers are looking for. The recruiters in trafficking are very good at their job. The process of grooming can happen over a period of time, weeks, or happen very quickly depending on the level of vulnerability, brokenness and depth of trauma the victim has experienced. This isn’t just happening to people who might be taken into a much larger trafficking operation — this could happen to one individual in your neighbor’s house,” said Bullock.

Who are the traffickers? According to Bullock, the bottom line is anybody could be a trafficker.

“It could be a family member, a parent, a neighbor, a coach, a pastor, it could be anybody and we’ve seen it all. Where does trafficking happen? Any place where they might find somebody who is just there to get away, someone who is running away, or somebody who’s just kind of broken. They really watch for this. Unfortunately, throughout COVID-19, there have been multiple situations where landlords have turned to some of their tenants who were not able to pay their rent and made deals with them,” said Bullock.

Unfortunately, trafficking is hard to prosecute because the proof needed is difficult to obtain.

“Trafficking is very high-profit and very low-risk and they know it. They know as long as they keep the money on an app and they keep it online and streamlined, they know that they can’t get caught. They have these individuals that they’re trafficking so conditioned that many if not all will fight for them. They will defend them, they won’t talk about them. We’ve got girls into treatment who are well into treatment, even a year or two down the road, and they still will not press charges or talk about it. So, the traffickers know that they’re not going to get caught unless they have a victim that is brave enough to come forward and stick with it,” said Bullock.

Bullock shared some red flags which may indicate a potential victim, such as the individual not being free to come and go, or the individual referring to a pimp, manager, or “dope boy.”

“With labor trafficking, you may see groups of workers. They may be kept in one particular place, so you may see a group of people getting in and out of vans or trucks, leaving early in the morning and arriving back late at night. You may encounter someone who is a housekeeper or nanny, a domestic servant who is working in the home, living in the home, that is also another opportunity. If you have a gut feeling, go with your gut. Start asking questions. Some common work and living conditions, there could be a lot of security measures around a home. There could be boarded-up windows, fencing, there could be somebody always sitting out on the porch watching,” said Bullock.

Unexplained injuries such as bruises, burns or fingerprints could be another indictator of trafficking-related abuse.

“Any minor that you might encounter that talks about being extremely sexually active or engaged in some kind of prostitution. A lot of times, you might see an individual that has a new watch, a new iPad, new expensive clothes. It is not judging someone to know where this person comes from and to question where they’re getting those things. That’s just paying attention. Tattoos are big; they branding these young ladies on their necks or on their arms. Most of the time, it’s going to be some kind of a gang tattoo, name or initials,” said Bullock.

The individual, lacking medical care, may look malnourished and dehydrated; they may have no or few personal possessions, and communicate using cellphone(s) with only WiFi.

“She will not be in charge of her own money. They may not have any identification. I have yet to come across an individual in these six years that had access to a birth certificate or a driver’s license. [If you encounter a person] who has another person with them who is answering all the questions, that is not allowing them to speak, or that person is looking at this individual to get permission to speak, that is a potential problem. [A potential victim] may not be clear where they are. They may not even know that they’re in Ohio, they may not know they’re in Adams County. They may not even know what time it is. So, just be mindful,” said Bullock.

Bullock encourages people to educate themselves by searching for human trafficking stories as “the more you listen to a survivor, the more you’re going to learn.”

“When you encounter someone that is potentially a trafficking victim, from that moment on, you give them choices; here are the options. These a very emotional people. They’re going to go more on emotional rather than logic in a lot of cases because that’s what they’ve been trained to do. Just be aware of that. Keep in mind that all of the training that we’re doing today also requires us in each organization and throughout the county to work together from this point forward to build a protocol. What does it look like in Adams County when we encounter a trafficking victim? Who do we call, how do we handle that? We’re going to be working on that as part of the first-day plan within the coalition on trafficking,” said Bullock.

If you find yourself in a situation with a potential trafficking victim, what you can do is quickly adopt a conversational approach.

“Be relaxed, make eye contact, mirror their body language. Give them choices, be empathetic. What do you do when you see red flags? If you feel like someone is being trafficked, or you’re witnessing something going on — if you see it’s an emergency default to 911 every time — but if you see something, [call the National Human Trafficking Hotline and explain] the kind of car it is, license plate number, description of the person driving it, [account and address of suspicious behavior], those kinds of things. It’s okay to be wrong. Don’t ever hesitate to call them. They would rather you be wrong than to miss something,” said Bullock.

To access the National Human Trafficking Hotline, call 1 (888) 373-7888. The U.S Department of Health and Human Services has released Toolkit and Guide: Adult Human Trafficking Screening, which can be viewed at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/otip/adult_human_trafficking_screening_tool_and_guide.pdf.

More resources can be found at https://odh.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/odh/know-our-programs/sexual-assault-and-domestic-violence-prevention-program/human-trafficking.