Human Trafficking
The international sex trafficking of girls is a well-known problem. Few people in the United States, however, are aware that domestic trafficking occurs here in our backyard. Action must be taken to change this. The FBI estimates that well over 100,000 children and young woman are trafficked in the United States today, ranging in age from 9 to 19. The average age of entry is 12 years old.
In the past, victims of child sex trafficking have been stereotyped as abandoned kids or troubled runaways from economically underprivileged homes. As such, many were treated by law enforcement authorities as runaways and criminals. Today, however, not only has the type of victim changed, but predators strategies have changed as well. In fact, domestic sex trafficking hits much closer to home; it happens to girls from middle class homes and those living behind gated communities.
As an example of the situations now being encountered by law enforcement authorities handling trafficking problems, a 15 year old girl named Debbie, was a straight A student in a close-knit Air Force family who was abducted from her own driveway in a Phoenix suburb. Debbie had gone outside her house to visit a casual friend who was in the neighborhood and had dropped by to say hello. As Debbie greeted and hugged her, her friend pushed her into a car where two men hidden in the back tied Debbie up, blindfolded her, and took her back to an apartment. During her 40 day captivity Debbie was moved around and forced to have sex with at least 50 men. Debbie did not try to escape because her captors told her they would go after her family; they even threatened to throw acid on her 19-month old niece. In order to protect her family, Debbie succumbed to her captors demands until police raided the apartment on a tip, found her crushed into a drawer under the bed, and rescued her.
Similarly, nineteen year old college student Natasha, who lived in an upper middle class suburb in Northern California, experienced a similar fate. While out shopping at the mall, Natasha was approached by a woman who said she liked the look of Natasha’s makeup and offered her a chance to apply for a position with the woman’s makeup team. After multiple phone interviews and a visit at the office, Natasha was offered the job and was asked to meet at a local restaurant to go over some final paperwork. At the restaurant, Natasha immediately sensed something was wrong as the woman had not only brought along a man Natasha had never seen before, but had completely changed her demeanor. Natasha, wanting to leave, excused herself saying that she was going to get her sweater in the car. However, she did not have the chance to escape. Upon exiting the restaurant two men grabbed her and put her in the back of a Mercedes where she was drugged and, like Debbie, forced into prostitution.
While the above stories are horrifying, so too is the lack of community response. Helping to change this is Lisa Brant, the mother of a 16-year old girl who was taken from a friend’s home in Pensacola, Florida. Brant’s daughter was drugged, raped, and about to be sold to a man in Texas for $300,000 before the police stepped in. Brant formed the group Mothers Against Trafficking Humans to raise awareness in North America since she says this is an issue people just don’t want to hear. Although Brant was able to share her story on national media outlets such as the Today Show and MSNBC, local organizations in her own community have yet to embrace her story. In fact, she’s been turned down by both Bendle and Flint School Districts in Michigan, where she now lives, to speak about her daughter’s plight.
Awareness of domestic trafficking is extremely important. Today’s predators don’t go after random girls. They are clever and strategic. Predators today are particularly adept at reading young girls and women and knowing their vulnerabilities. According to FBI Deputy Assistant Director Chip Burns, “What you see, time and again, is that the predators will adapt their means to whatever the young people are doing- whether it’s malls, whether it’s ski slopes, whether it’s beaches…predators are going to do everything in their power to try to convince young girls to come with them and enter this particular lifestyle.” They will continue to succeed unless the community steps up and takes a more proactive approach.
The Sahuaro Girl Scout Council is proud to do its part in highlighting the issue and is offering a chance for families and community stakeholders to take control of the situation and learn more about this hidden world. On Thursday, January 27, 2011 we will be holding a trafficking awareness training at our Council’s Resource Center at 4300 East Broadway Boulevard. We will be joined by Rachel Irby, DIGNITY Residential Program Supervisor, who has worked on the Immersion Experience Event in Phoenix. As previously indicated, sex trafficking of minors happens in every state, to children of every ethnic and economic background. The Sahuaro Girl Scouts asks you to help make Arizona a safer place for our girls and find out what can be done here in Tucson to address this pressing issue.
We hope you join us for our very first trafficking awareness training. It is only with the help of the community that we can deter child sex trafficking and bring justice to those young girls and women who have needlessly suffered.