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Human Trafficking

  •  sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt form such act has not attained 18 years of age; or
  • The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion bondage, or slavery.

Action

  • Recruiting
  • Harboring
  • Transporting
  • providing
  • Obtaining

Means

  • Force
  • Fraud or
  • Coercion

purpose

  • Commercial Sex or
  • Labor/Services

Different Forms Of Human Trafficking and

False Dreams: Preying Upon the hopes of a child.
Traffickers will pose as a job giver or someone willing and able to help a young person reach their dreams. Children, just like adults, have hopes of achieving new heights, success and lifestyles. A skilled trafficker will find ways to make their victim believe that they can help them and that they know best how they can reach that dream. That dream can be to become a model, going to college, becoming a famous sport star, or really anything. In 2018, there were 402 reported cases of sex trafficking and 743 cases of labor trafficking where the trafficker used the illusion of a false promise to lure their victim. In 2009, a 13 year old girl ran away whose father had recently died met a registered foster parent, Shelby Lewis, who told her she could be a part of his family. She moved in with him and soon was being sold for sex all over the nation’s capital. She was forced to make $500 a night for him for over three years. Along with 12 year old girl, she was found by the police on the streets just blocks from the White House. When the police raided his home, they found weapons and online advertisements selling the girls.
Source
Romeo Pimping: offering false promises of love and protection
Traffickers often pose as a romantic interest to trap young victims looking for love that is missing in their lives. They will use a cycle of false promises and violence to confuse their victims while then selling them online, on the streets, in homes or hotels. This is the top most used form of recruitment by traffickers with 1078 cases of intimate partner trafficking to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in 2018. In 2017, 15 year old Danielle was trafficked by two brothers who met her while she was homeless and living in a hotel with her aunt. Previously trafficked by her mom at 14, she was easily lured into what she believed was a romantic relationship with an adult pimp. Danielle would be trafficked online during the day to numerous men and then lived in a hotel room with her trafficker at night. Only when a stranger called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was Danielle recovered. She is now pregnant with her traffickers child.
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Sextortion: Using the threat of exposing a sexualized image to make a child do things they do not want to do.
Online sexual predators primarily target youth through social media and most victims do not know their exploiter in real life. Not all sextortion is sex trafficking, but when money or other things of value are exchanged by the trafficker and a third party - often viewing the childs images or watching them via live videos - it becomes sex trafficking. Sextortion is increasingly international in scope. Children, exploiters, and the buyers may be near by but could be as far apart as the United States to the Philippines or Romania. Sextortion: Woodson vs. Southern District of Florida Children across the country were forced to send sexually explicit content to a Virginia man, Joseph Isiah Woodson from September 2017 until October 2018. Woodson would pretend to be another child and gain access to their passwords on Snapchat and Kik. Once he had control of the accounts, he demanded the children send sexual images to him. He was sentenced to 50 years in jail.
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Family-based trafficking: Family who sell & abuse their own children or family member
Sadly, family members do exploit their own children in many ways ranging from forcing them to sell candy or water in danger conditions to selling them for sex. According the National Human Trafficking Resource Center 2018 report, there were 893 reports of family-based sex trafficking and 145 reports of labor trafficking. In 2016, an 11 year old girl was sold for sex multiple times by her mother for a span of 5 months in 2014. Her mother was addicted to heroin and used the money she obtained for selling her child to feed her addiction. Her mother was sentenced to 51 years to life in prison at the Hamilton County Common Pleas Courthouse in Ohio. At the end of trial, she was living with her father and stepmother and siblings in another state. She experiences suicidal thoughts and is in medical and mental health care.
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Child candy crews and peddling: Labor Exploitation
Children as young as 7 are made to sell candy and other items in often unsafe conditions. Often, their exploiters are adults who are either family or trusted adults. These children are legally too young to work and often do not see anything other than perhaps a meal after working often 10 to 12 hour days. There is little data documenting the prevalence of child begging. Aden Devlin was forced at age 6 to sell candy on the subways of Philadelphia to help his father earn money. At age 7, Aden fell between the train cars and died. Many people saw Aden and his brother over the years as they sold candy car to car. His father has been charged with murder and child endangerment.
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Traveling sales crews: Labor Exploitation
Young people, some still minors, are lured into scams of selling magazines online. These youth are often promised commission and a chance to travel. Instead, they are often taken across state lines and forced to live in hotels, threaten, assaulted, isolated from friends, and in some cases sexually abused. If they want to leave, they are often abandoned with no ID and no phone or money to return home. Traffickers operating the sales crews often target runaway, homeless and foster care youth. In 2014, two teen girls aged 15 and 16 were forced to sell magazines as part of a scam to make money by two adult men who took them from South Dakota to North Carolina. They were promised regular wages and a place to stay after having run away from a foster home to find a better life. They were instead forced to live in a motel and unable to leave out of fear of assault and sexual abuse.
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Forced criminality: Labor Exploitation
Increasingly more used by traffickers, forced criminality involves having victims, of which many are children, commit crimes that range from ATM theft, pick-pocketing, forced begging, drug cultivation, bag snatching, and selling counterfeit items. Many victims are exploited to multiple types of criminal exploitation to ensure they are truly trapped into their traffickers web. This method of exploitation targets youth who do not understand the long-term possibilities of the blackmail and extortion that may be involved. When found, these victims are often treated as criminals and are too afraid to speak with the police. A young woman, S.E. – who was developmentally delayed – was held with her daughter in subhuman conditions and forced to endure abuse. She was forced, along with her daughter, to clean the defendants apartment, do yard work, care for their dogs, and run errands. She was also forced to steal food stamps and conduct scams on credit cards. She was afraid of jail and losing her daughter and thus did not try to leave. She was forced to sleep in an unfinished basement and locked inside. She was forced to soil herself and demeaned by being made to smear feces on her face. She and her daughter endured two years of extreme abuse. They were identified as victims of labor trafficking after being found by law enforcement.
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Domestic servitude: Labor Exploitation
Domestic servitude is the top form of labor trafficking according the National Human Trafficking Resource Center 2018 statistical report. This form of human trafficking involves exploiting someone, often a minor, through forcing them to engage in little to no wage house work, child care, and other domestic tasks. Often, the victim lives in the house or nearby to their traffickers and have little to no means of escaping. Victims can be both U.S. and foreign nationals. Promises of going to school or having a safe place to live as well as living wages are usually made to lure victims into the trafficking situation. Domestic Immigration Trafficking: For 16 years, Dijena Diallo was a domestic slave living in Dallas under the control of a married couple, Mohamed Toure and Denise Cros-Toure. From Guinea, she was taken by the family at the age of 5. To many, she just appeared to be part of the family but at home she was forced to cook, clean and nanny the children without pay. She did not attend school and was called a dog and beaten. She was often sent to sleep in a park as punishment. In 2016, Dijena escaped and her traffickers were sentenced to seven years in prison, a $288,620.24 restitution fine and deportation following release from prison.
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HUMAN TRAFFICKING V. LABOR EXPLOITATION

Human Trafficking

  • Element of force, fraud or coercion
  • Little/no earnings
  • Limited/no freedom of movement
  • Unable to leave

Labor Exploitation

  • Sub-standard work conditions
  • Unfair wages
  • Freedom of movement
  • Freedom to leave

HUMAN TRAFFICKING V. SMUGGLING

Smuggling is NOT the same as human trafficking Smuggling: bringing or harboring unauthorized aliens Human trafficking:

  • Smuggling: bringing or harboring unauthorized aliens
  • Human trafficking: force, fraud, or coercion to compel a person into commercial sex or labor/services
  • Human trafficking does NOT require movement or transportation

MYTHS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

Human Trafficking….

  • Always involves travel
  • Sex trafficking affects females only
  • Affects foreign nationals or immigrants only
  • Is prostitution only
  • Affects “illegals” only
  • Requires physical abuse in order to control
  • Must involve force
  • If you are smuggled illegally, you can’t be a victim of trafficking

Who is at risk?

Human trafficking has long-term and lasting traumatic consequences that are often compounded by previous traumas and abuse. Young survivors are often depressed or suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. Many have lost trust in themselves and others. It is critical that they have access to qualified mental health services.

While any child can become a victim, there are key risk factors that place a young person at risk. This includes being youth with substance bonding issues, homelessness and food insecurity, being a victim of school bullying, experiencing child abuse or neglect, being undocumented or living with a disability. Traffickers prey upon the physical, emotional and mental vulnerabilities of their victims regardless of age. Peer pressure, lack of maturity and the inability to assert legal agency are all components as to why children are at risk toward human trafficking. 

 

Youth living with disabilities face heightened risk. That includes mental health disabilities like PTSD, bipolar disorder and depression.  In many cases, mental health disabilities is cited as a key element of the risk that young people face toward human trafficking. 

Traffickers will lead their young victims into thinking that no one will believe them due to their age. They will convince them that they won’t find anything better than what the trafficker is offering and will isolate them from friends and family.

Traffickers can be anyone but at their core their chief trait is that they are willing to exploit another person for their profit. They can be men, women, families, businesses, diplomats, community leaders, teachers, family members, boyfriends and girlfriends. They often have similar backgrounds to their victims, which helps them gain their trust.

Free to be curriculum
Lights parent guide curriculum

RISK FACTORS

While any child can become a victim, there are key risk factors that place a young person at risk.These risk factors are often in combination with one another.

  • Online Bullying
  • Social isolation at school
  • Food insecurity
  • Cognitive or developmental disabilities
  • Emotional disabilities
  • Witness or victim of domestic violence
  • Victim of child abuse
  • Abusive partners
  • Excessive unmonitored online communications with unknown persons (ie have not met ‘in real life.’)
  • Gender minority discrimination
  • Attachment disruptions with parents, such as foster care
  • Homelessness or housing insecurity
  • Unmet mental health needs
  • Substance abuse
  • Gang involvement
  • Lack of employment
  • Parents or caretakers with substance abuse
  • Undocumented status
  • Excessive contact with the juvenile justice system

RED FLAGS

There are a few red flags that may indicate that a young person is at risk or is currently being victimized. That you are looking for is most likely a combination of red flags.

  • Secretive behavior
  • Lack of knowledge of whereabouts
  • Unusual, older or a lot of new adult or older friends on social media
  • Disoriented or withdrawn
  • Unable to explain the presence of new items such as purses or shoes
  • Lack of control over personal IDs or money
  • Signs of physical or sexual abuse
  • Multiple Cell Phones
  • Keycards to various hotel rooms
  • Excessive condoms
  • Constantly checking their phone
  • Unexplained bruises
  • Clothing that is out of season
  • Multiple social media accounts with highly sexualized or commodifying names (ie. LittleBooThangy of GettinThatBread)
  • Increased sexualized content
  • Excessive physical or sexual injuries
  • Unexplained absences
  • Excessive truancy
  • Gang involvement
  • New much older boyfriend or girlfriend
  • Scripted or inconsistent communications
  • Fake ID
  • Depressive comments
  • Sudden drop in grades or lack of interest in school

Get In touch

We provide survivor-led consultations on developing safe homes, drop in centers, identifying youth who are experiencing exploitation, educating parents and caretakers on how to talk to kids about all forms of human trafficking. To learn more about consultation services with our team, please contact us.

If you are experiencing exploitation or trafficking call the National Trafficking Resource center

1(888)-3737-888

Or TEXT  #BEFREE to 233733

Join us now in giving directly to a survivor in crisis or need.We offer survivors in our care direct access to services everyday.

FUNDRAISE

Fecha Talaso

Fecha Talaso is the co-founder and director of partnerships at Karana Rising. Fecha  is a certified victim advocate using her eight  years of advocacy and direct service work to cultivate staff growth and development to advance the mission of Karana Rising and the individual goals of the survivors on our team.

Fecha works alongside the executive director to develop and advance policies and programs supporting survivor justice and and healing, including external earned media and owned media consumption. Fecha is responsible for creating and managing Karana Rising’s communications, website, virtual survivor mentoring and workshop portal and social media channels. She is responsible for the development and management of programmatic and development partnerships. 

Prior to joining Karana Rising, Fecha was the prevention education specialist at FAIR Girls, a nonprofit that serves young women survivors of human trafficking, and residential counselor for FAIR Girls’ Vida Home. 
 
Longing for a day when justice is perfect with a deeper international lens from which to view the health and humanitarian challenges facing people around the globe,wealth of experience and practical experience in development and a deep belief in the power of partnership and collaboration and transformation of vulnerable populations and communities at large has continually reenergized the urge to change the world in her own little ways. She dares to dream and passionately to fight criminal and social injustices, as well as retrogressive practices that marginalize vulnerable populations like women and children. She can be reached at fecha@karanarising.org

Andrea Powell

Andrea Powell is the co-founder and executive director at Karana Rising. Ms. Powell is Karana Rising’s chief liaison to the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force where she co-chairs the training and outreach committee.

 Prior to founding Karana Rising, Andrea was the founding executive director of FAIR Girls, a nonprofit that serves young women survivors of human trafficking. Ms. Powell is also the Director of Survivor and Youth Engagement at Unitas. In 2014, Andrea led the FAIR Girls’ team to create and open the only safe home for young survivors of human trafficking in the nation’s capital area. Andrea has led crisis response teams where she assisted law enforcement and other front-line responders in finding and recovering survivors of human trafficking who were later offered safety and supportive services. She received her Masters of European Union Law at the Center for European Integration Studies from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany and Bachelor of Arts and Science in International Relations from Texas State University. Andrea’s writing has been published in the New York Times, CNN, PBS, Huffington Post, Marie Claire, MSNBC, NBC THINX, Thompson Reuters, FAIR Observer, and the Washington Post. She also sits a private consultant for Freedom Fwd and Project Explorer. She can be reached at andrea@karanarising.com